Nothing Like the Sun
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM slash, HPOCs as background. Harry, told that he's too ugly and not good enough at sex to keep a wizard lover, tries to compromise by getting better, and then by one night stands with Muggles. He's not happy, but he's content, until Draco Malfoy proposes a casual relationship. Trust Malfoy to ruin everything.
1. Honesty

**Title: **Nothing Like the Sun

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco (main), Harry/Ginny and Harry/OCs (background).

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Heavy angst, body image issues, references to canonical child abuse, promiscuity

**Summary: **Harry finally realizes that he has trouble keeping lovers both because of his looks and because he isn't very good at sex. He does what he can to alter that, but it seems he's never going to be good enough to satisfy a wizard lover. When Draco Malfoy offers, Harry thinks a casual relationship with him might be the solution to his problems. But he should have remembered one thing: when it comes to Harry, Malfoy has a problem _staying _casual.

**Author's Notes: **The title is taken from the first line of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. This story is going to be irregularly updated whenever I finish a chapter, but will probably not be very long in terms of total number of chapters.

**Nothing Like the Sun**

_Chapter One-Honesty_

"Because you hurt me when you top, and you lie there like a dead fish when you bottom."

Harry half-closed his eyes. Then he snapped them open again. He had asked Frank to be open with him, to be, well, frank, and he couldn't hide from the truth now.

He'd come home from the Ministry that day to find Frank packing his trunks. Harry had yelled, more about Frank's apparent intention to creep out the door without telling him than because Frank was breaking up with him. After losing four other lovers the same way, Harry was getting resigned to it.

And that had led into asking _why _Frank was leaving, and Frank had offered to tell him.

"I can't _stand _it anymore," Frank ranted, pacing back and forth across Harry's kitchen. It was a small, comfortable room, with black and white tiles on the floor and the walls. At the moment, though, with Harry's pulse pounding dully in his ears, it felt too hot. "You're _no good at sex_, Harry. I'm sorry to hurt you, but that's the way it is." He spun around again to face Harry, his breath fast, and added, "And that scar on your hand, and those _nightmares_. I'm sorry." He was saying that only for form's sake, Harry knew, staring into Frank's handsome face. "I can't do this anymore."

But that last part was the truth.

Harry wrapped his arms around himself. Then he flinched when he saw Frank's gaze, and pulled them away. Frank disliked that, too, the way Harry got all defensive when someone said something ordinary. He was as protective of Harry when it came to the crazy fans as Harry could have wished, but he didn't think Harry should curl up like someone had stepped on him just because he got insulted.

Harry had tried, once, to tell him about the Dursleys. And Frank had shaken his head, not refusing to listen, but refusing to let it matter.

"They're in the past," he had said, his hands clamping down on Harry's shoulders and pulling him close enough that he could gaze sternly into Harry's face. "They can't hurt you now. They could never find you in the middle of the wizarding world. You _get _that? You _understand _that? There's no _way_."

And Harry had said, "Sure," and gone on having the nightmares and trying to talk with the Healers that Hermione had suggested he see, but they couldn't do anything. And Harry couldn't see a doctor in the Muggle world. They were missing half the context, the same way the Healers were.

"That scar on my hand?" Harry finally asked, staring down at the words scratched on the back of his hand. _I must not tell lies._

"It's a scar from a Blood Quill," Frank snapped. "I know it is."

Harry looked at him, and found a spark of temper under the ashes of his resignation, after all. "And you think I used it on _myself_?" he spat. "Of my own free will? That's incredibly generous of you, Frank, it really is."

Frank shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair. "I know that someone used it on you," he said. "Or made you use it. You can't deny that it's your own handwriting, Harry."

Harry opened his mouth, shut it again, and finally just grunted. Of course it was his own handwriting. And of course he couldn't tell Frank the exact circumstances. It was the past, again, and Frank would have just told him to get over it, the way he had told Harry to get over the Dursleys.

But Harry hadn't ever seen Frank look at Harry's hand the way he did now, his eyes wide and shadowed. Disgust was written there, and contempt.

Harry tucked his hand close to him before he thought about it. No one had done that before. But then, no one had ever told him he sucked at sex before, either. Frank was—telling him the reasons why he was breaking up with him.

_Maybe other people broke up with me for the same reasons._

And Ginny _had _hinted something about the nightmares, hadn't she? And Jacquelyn had grimaced whenever Harry wanted to have sex that wasn't oral sex. And Karl, whom Harry had had to seduce slowly because neither of them had ever been with a man before, had recoiled the first time he got a glimpse of Harry completely naked.

Frank, his thoughts running in tandem with Harry's the way they always did, nodded vigorously, his uncut black hair flapping into his eyes. Harry watched him with a thick ache in the center of his chest. It didn't feel like he was having a heart attack, he thought, just like someone was drilling around his heart.

"That's it," Frank whispered. "You're so _skinny_. You have all those _scars_." He hesitated, then continued, "Your eyes are beautiful, Harry, and so is your laugh. And you have enough muscles to content anyone. But the rest of you…" His mouth firmed. "And no one ever taught you to be any good at sex, that's certain."

Harry licked his lips, and said, "You were only the third man I'd ever been with. You know that."

Frank curled his hand and flung it away from him. "Sure," he said. "But you never told me that no one had ever taught you not to _hurt _someone. And you never told me that you'd lie there under me with your eyes closed and your breath held until I'm done. And God forbid that you _come _from someone inside you."

Harry's face was doing more than burning now; it felt as if it was going to burn him _up_. He clapped his hands to his cheeks and turned away towards the bedroom.

Frank stepped in front of him. He had blue eyes, blazing blue, the color of a depthless sky, and he put out a hand and shook Harry hard enough to make Harry wince back from him.

"Oh, no," Frank said softly. "You told me that you wanted honesty, and you're getting it. Don't you dare run away now."

So Harry had to stand there while Frank took a critical step back and watched him as if he was evaluating him for purchase. Then he shook his head.

"The face is nice," Frank conceded. "Very nice. But you have too many marks that you haven't tried to erase. The scar on your face, I can understand. You're known by that bloody lightning bolt, and there's no reason to give up something that could attract more people. And I don't even know if dittany and so on work on curse scars, anyway.

"But the _rest_." He seized and rattled Harry's right hand, where the words from Umbridge's Blood Quill were, and then pressed his hand against his chest, where the locket had burned Harry during the war. "You don't care about anything at all. Not the way you look, not the way seeing those scars is going to affect someone."

Harry found words for his dry throat. "I'm an Auror. You knew when you started sleeping with me that I was going to carry some scars—"

"But scars like that can be sexy," Frank said, and his eyes fell on the words on Harry's right hand again. He dropped the hand as though it had burned him and turned his back, stalking towards the far side of the kitchen. He was packing his trunk with the silverware he had brought with him, back when he moved in, months ago, Harry realized. That made him want to laugh or spit, but he didn't have enough saliva in his mouth for either. "Not scars from the war."

"I don't understand what the difference is." Harry heard his voice come out all meek and diffident, and Frank must have heard the same thing, because he turned to Harry with his lip curled back and his hands clenching around the handles of his knives.

"You have no fire," Frank whispered. "No spirit. I thought you did, because of the way you stood up for the right of house-elves, but you really have none, do you? Nothing that you do with other humans matters to you."

Harry shook his head, feeling himself blush again. "You don't want me to hide, and you don't want me to tell the truth," he said. "Because I really don't understand what the difference is between scars from the war and scars from the Aurors."

Frank closed his eyes. "You have the scars of _abuse_," he whispered. "You scream in your sleep as if you were terrified."

"I was bloody terrified," Harry said, startled into the simple truth. He'd thought he'd told Frank that, if not all the details of what Voldemort had done during things like the ritual in the graveyard. "Did you think I wouldn't be? I was a fourteen-year-old kid through some of it. And even younger, sometimes."

Frank glanced back at him, his eyes gone dark in a way that Harry had never seen them before, in a way that made him wonder what kind of hauntings Frank himself had. Maybe there was more reason than Harry had thought for him acting like he did.

None of which made hearing the truth about why he was leaving Harry any more comfortable.

"When you were a kid, I can understand," Frank whispered. "But you had the chance to get rid of those scars later. The _choice_. Keep the ones that come from you standing up to your enemies, fine, but why would you want to keep the things that remind you of when people hurt you and you couldn't fight back?"

Harry rubbed the words on the back of his hand, and didn't say a word. In truth, he had never thought of it, because the scars didn't bother him and he only rolled his eyes at the stories in the papers that talked about them. But he knew Frank would ask him _why _he had never thought of it, and those words would turn into some deep, profound truth about him, some truth that Harry didn't want to hear.

"I don't want to be the means of someone hiding from themselves," Frank said, and snapped the lid of his trunk shut. "But I also didn't want to hurt you. So I wouldn't have told you this if you hadn't asked." He turned towards Harry again and folded his arms, hard enough to make his sleeves spasm around them and fall to his sides. "Just remember that, that you were the one who asked me."

Harry licked his dry lips. "I'll always remember that," he whispered. "I needed to know why you were leaving."

Frank rolled his eyes. "Because you suck at sex, and you're not as attractive as I thought you were, and you keep hiding from the past," he said, and picked up the trunk with a wave of his wand. "Because you aren't enough of a wizard for me. You're too _Muggle. _Potions and Mind-Healers are options, but you didn't think about them." He stepped neatly past Harry and walked out the door, calling back over his shoulder, "I'm sorry, but maybe you should look into Muggle methods if you're so unwilling to try the magical ones."

Harry stood there with his head bowed into his chest and his arms folded, trying to keep what he was feeling inside. But he couldn't, and after the door had shut behind Frank and he was safe from exposing his weakness to anyone else, he sat down in a chair and scrubbed at his eyes.

He didn't want to think that it was true. He would have given a lot to keep it from being true.

But…

He couldn't escape the memory of the way Ginny had refused to talk about his nightmares. The way Karl had flinched when he looked at Harry. And how Jacquelyn had closed her eyes whenever Harry prepared to enter her. Had he _hurt _her?

Yeah. He probably had.

And that meant he needed to do something.

* * *

"I don't think I understand what you want." The Healer frowned at Harry and shook her head, her hand still resting on the vial of potion she'd brought into the room with her. "You want to gain weight? There's no potion that does that, purely. Any potion that affects the body, and which we dispense, has to accomplish more than one purpose, and that purpose has to do with health."

Harry grimaced and swung his legs on the edge of the bed he was sitting on. The rooms that St. Mungo's Healers saw patients in-at least, patients who weren't permanent residents-were bright and cold and comfortless, with blue walls and only a few pieces of furniture. Then again, Harry supposed the few Muggle doctors he had been to weren't much better.

_I have to let her know. _

Harry didn't really want to-enough people had flinched and turned away from the truth about him-but at least the Healer had probably seen cases like this before. He raised his eyes to hers and said, "I was malnourished as a child. I'm tired of looking the way I do, all scrawny and skinny. Do you have a potion that can help the effects of that?"

The Healer flushed, looking at him. "But who would-" She broke off in some confusion, probably at Harry's glare, or maybe because she had just remembered that he was raised by Muggles. She bowed her head, and nodded. "I have something that might work," she said, and withdrew, leaving Harry with his fingers clenched into the thin sheet on the bed.

_I don't want to tell people. I want to be able to take the bloody potion and walk away._

But Harry took a deep breath and restrained himself. He was going to plan, he _had _to plan, if he ever wanted to be different, to look different, to act like the kind of person who could keep a lover. Just plunging ahead without a plan had got him all those scars in the war, and had made him think that he could keep going forever since then. He had to calm down and let his plans take the time they took.

The Healer came back with a squat stone bottle that made a bubbling sound. She set it down on the small metal table in front of her and peered earnestly at Harry. He peered back, and that was enough to make her turn to the potion, petting the bottle distractedly.

"This can't repair all the effects of childhood malnutrition," the Healer said. "You're too old for that."

Harry nodded in silent resignation. He should have known that.

"But," the Healer said, "it will make you less skinny and make you better able to absorb nutrition from the food you do get now. And it might reverse some of the effects of what happened to you if you take it long enough."

"Well?" Harry asked, as the silence lengthened. "Is there something else? Is it addictive?"

"What? Oh, no!" The Healer looked up with moist eyes. "Not that, not at all. I was just wishing-that someone could have done something in time."

"No one did," Harry said, and seized the potion from her while she was still wincing. "How many times a day for this potion? And how much?"

"Three drops on the tongue, just like Veritaserum." The Healer still gazed at him with her eyes watering, and Harry turned away. "Take it no more than once a day, and before the heaviest meal you'll eat that day."

Harry nodded shortly. He was going to eat lunch soon, and he would make sure to eat a lot and take the potion right before. He wanted to get this started as soon as possible.

"Auror Potter?"

He'd thought he would get away without further interaction, but he should have known better. Stilling himself with his hand on the door, Harry turned back towards the Healer and stared at her. "Yeah?"

"I wish," the Healer said, and turned away herself.

Harry relaxed as he walked out. It seemed the Healer had understood, herself, how useless it was to continue the conversation, and that increased the likelihood that she wouldn't tell anyone else.

The potion was a bright aqua and tasted like honey gone sour, but Harry didn't care. He was willing to do anything if it meant that he could settle into a permanent bond in the end. He had thought he would have that with Frank, who wanted so much for him to be strong, who was always honest, who had helped Harry overcome some other challenges, like Aurors in his Department who were jealous of him.

But if it wasn't to be with Frank, it would be with someone else. Harry refused to accept anything less.

* * *

"The reason a glamour is difficult," Magical Theorist Alcibiades said, leaning forwards so that his long brown hair fell into his eyes, "is not the inherent power of the spell. It is the difficulty of _learning _what your body looks like in order to match the glamour to it. It should be easy to use one on the back of your hand, you think? But how often do you look at the back of your hand?"

"Not often," Harry had to admit. He leaned back, balancing on the stool that Alcibiades insisted was the most comfortable sort of seat one could have while learning glamours. Harry didn't think it was, but Alcibiades was the expert and he wasn't. At least it had advantages over the hard seats that the Aurors had trained him on.

"Exactly." Alcibiades nodded, and this time his hair flopped around him like a horse's mane. Some of the people in the portraits behind him echoed the gesture. Harry had never seen a room so crowded with portraits; in between the frames where there wasn't room for more, photographs had been hung. Wizards and witches in rich robes, in tatters, in rooms, in landscapes, on the edges of oceans, craned their necks to watch the lesson. "So you have to spend time becoming familiar with your body so you can change it."

Harry frowned. "I don't have to think _more _about the image that I want to achieve?"

"You need to think about both," Alcibiades said, and held up one long, thin finger, tracing it around in front of him. He wore mauve robes, the only wizard Harry had ever met besides Dumbledore who did so. "So you become familiar with the image that you want to project, and the image that's there. Think about actors. They need to know both what they normally act like and what they want to act like in a play, don't you think?"

Harry thought about that, and nodded. "All right. So how do I begin?"

"Look at your hands," Alcibiades said. "Both of them," he added, as Harry started to lift the scarred right hand towards his eyes. "You need to match the glamour to make sure that your illusory hand doesn't look too different from the one you leave unchanged."

Harry was starting to think that there wasn't much about himself that he would _want _to leave unchanged, but he obediently lifted the hands beside each other, right and left, and held them out in front of him. He thought he heard one of the portraits mutter something about "too skinny." Harry tried not to flinch. Of course he was. He was here, and taking the Healer's potions, to try and learn not to be.

The thick scarring on his right hand was the most visible difference. Harry studied the curves of his letters and the sloppy way he crossed his t's, which Snape had always complained about. He noticed the depth of the letters, and hid another flinch. No _wonder _Frank had left. Harry hadn't paid much attention to the scar since the end of the war, so used to it that it was part of him, but that just meant he had never noticed how ugly it was.

"Don't think about ugliness," Alcibiades murmured. Harry started and lifted his head. The magical theorist was watching him, legs crossed beneath him on his own stool, mauve robes stirring slightly around him with his breath. "I know you are because of the expression on your face," he added. "I'm not a Legilimens. But you need to see what's there, to remember what it is, and to duplicate it, whether it's beautiful or not."

Harry looked at his hands again. So the skin was a medium brown tan, with really pale fingernails. He studied them until he thought he could pick out the exact shade of his skin from a bunch of color samples, and until he knew that he could echo the precise height of the half-moons visible on his nails.

Then he began on the pattern of the hair, and the way that the letters of the word _lies _curved around some of the veins, and the hands became a maze of objects and colors. His breathing slowed. He forgot, gently, about the way the scars had terrified Frank. He forgot about the other scars he carried on his body, and how long it would take him to match them and thus become the anonymous, unscathed person that he wanted to be.

"Good," Alcibiades whispered, a timeless time later. "Now, lift your wand and swish it to the side-the left, only-and whisper the incantation _Integumentum Manus._"

Harry thought he would have stumbled on the long first word of the incantation normally, since he still wasn't good at Latin, but that thought was part of the dream-world that he had left behind by concentrating so hard on his hands. He lifted his wand and moved it in the swish and flick Alcibiades had talked about, at the same time concentrating as hard as he could on envisioning his right hand looking like his left one.

The words of the scar blurred and disappeared. Harry had a right hand with exactly the same covering of hair and shades and fingernails as his left one.

"Good," Alcibiades murmured. "Later, we will talk about varying the glamour so that the hair on your hands does not look exactly alike. But this is very good for a first effort."

Harry nodded his thanks, not raising his eyes from the glamour that concealed his stupid scar. He couldn't turn away from the sight of himself looking _normal, _for once. He would have to change some things, and it would be a long time before he was an expert, but...

He imagined himself waving his wand a few times and concealing every single scar, the ones that marked him as part of the war and the ones that marked him as an Auror. Then he would hide his skinniness, and the weird way his hair looked, and maybe even the color of his eyes. If it was his eyes that were attracting people to him who didn't really want to be with him, the way Frank had implied, then he should dim them to ensure that those people would see something else.

"Harry?"

Harry looked up. He had given Alcibiades permission to call him that, when the first lesson began, because if nothing else Alcibiades would be seeing parts of him naked as he taught Harry to conceal the more intimate scars.

"Use this because you need to," Alcibiades said, almost leaning off his stool to place a gentle hand on Harry's wrist. "Not because someone else tells you to."

Harry snorted a little and looked back at his wrist. So _knobby_. Once he had mastered the glamour to conceal that, too, he knew he would use it all the time.

"I will," he said.

Alcibiades sighed, and let him go.

* * *

Harry stood in front of the entrance to the nondescript building for long seconds, staring at it. It wasn't anything very special or important. Flashing lights blared out of it, and lots of music-well, Harry thought some of it was music and some of it was dancers screaming in delight and anger-and there was a steady stream of people going in, a trickle coming out.

This was a Muggle club, the testing ground Harry had decided to come to when his glamours were good enough that he could conceal the most "magical" scars, the one on the back of his hand and the lightning bolt scar. He had added minor ones to his hair, too. It still looked odd, or so Harry thought Alcibiades would have said, but it was good enough to pass as one of the "normal" things that Muggles did to their hair.

He was going to go in there and practice at sex until he got good at it.

Well, he was going to go to _lots _of clubs and practice until he got good at it. There was no chance that he would go unnoticed if he tried to do that in the wizarding world, so he would do it here. Again and again, until he was good enough to find and keep a partner.

But his feet didn't want to move. Harry bit his lip and ruffled a hand through his half-spiky, half-flat hair again. He still wanted what he had thought he had with Frank, a permanent partnership, what he had wanted with Ginny and Jacquelyn and Karl and Andy-

He flinched from the thought of Andy, and lowered his head. Well, he had a decision to make. Either he stood here and then eventually went home and potentially frightened his perfect partner away later because he was terrible at fucking, or he went in there and let a few people fuck him and got good at it for his partner when he found them.

Harry still didn't know who that partner would be. But the thought of them was enough to make his feet move, to carry him forwards and into the lights and noise.

And when he found his mouth filled with a cock later that night, he managed not to use his teeth and to relax his throat, to let the Muggle man go deep. He moaned when he came. Harry swallowed it, feeling the sharp tingle of the charms he'd cast on himself, mouth and cock and arse, to prevent the transfer of any diseases.

One moan didn't mean a lot. Neither did the bleary way the man peered at Harry and patted his cheek before stumbling away. But it was better than the last few times Frank had reacted when Harry tried to suck him. That had to mean something, didn't it? Maybe that he fucked better when he looked different.

Harry stood up, closed his eyes for a few seconds, cast one more Cleaning Charm on his teeth, and went to find someone else to practice on.

* * *

"I just can't. I...can't."

Harry leaned against the wall of his bedroom, a small place that he had added a larger bed to and decorated with green and white in the last year, and breathed shallowly. He told himself firmly that he wasn't _really _sick to his stomach. He wasn't sick at all. He wasn't going to vomit. He just felt like he was.

He opened his eyes and watched as Veronica Tobley tugged her robes on haphazardly, raking her fingers through her long black hair. She caught Harry's glance and looked rapidly away, her own eyes shut.

"Is it the scars?" Harry asked dully. Veronica had persuaded him to remove the glamours the second time they were in bed together, saying she wanted to see the real him. Harry had complied, wildly glad and with a taste like freedom in his mouth. Yes, he could keep the glamours up much more easily now than he had been able to the first time he was practicing with Alcibiades, but he had wanted someone who wanted him for himself.

He had pretended not to notice when Veronica flinched when her hand brushed against the scar along his throat, where a great snake had bitten him shortly before he broke up with Karl. For some reason, that was the one that scared her. Well, she stared at the lightning bolt one, too, but Harry thought the expression in her eyes when she did that was awe, and not fear.

"It's the nightmares," Veronica said, and a great sob worked its way up her throat. Harry blinked at her. Veronica had turned her back to him and stood with her head in her hands, forcing down more sobs before she could speak. "I can't-oh, Harry, this sounds terrible, but I can't deal with the things that you talk about in your sleep."

"Voldemort?" Harry asked, and she swung around on him, jumping half a meter in the air as she did so.

"How can you just say the name?" she whispered. "Even now, how can you _do _that?"

"He's dead," Harry said helplessly. He wasn't sure what expression was on her face now as she stared back at him, but he knew it wasn't good.

"Yes, but he was terrible." Veronica snatched up her wand and shook her head, then paused to cast a charm that would smooth her hair down. "And you're part of the world that held him, as powerful as Dumbledore, because he was the only other one who would say that name."

"My friends say it too," Harry said, but it came out as a mumble. Veronica had planted her hands on her hips, the way she did when she thought he was being deliberately stupid, and Harry knew he had lost. Again.

"Well, I wasn't going to say it," Veronica snapped, "because you seemed so anxious about it, and I think it's mean. But your performance isn't the best, Harry. You hold back like I'm fragile, and then you slam it in, and it's just-not-" She shut her eyes, revealing weariness that made Harry wonder how many sleepless nights she'd fretted away beside him. "It doesn't work," she finally finished, weakly.

Harry bowed his head. He heard Veronica come near him as if she was going to touch his arm, but he shrank back, and Veronica hesitated, then left. Harry waited to hear the light tread of her footsteps on the stairs before he opened his eyes and held his arms out in front of him. They were shaking.

Well. That was that.

Hermione would probably urge him to get back out there, to date someone else. She had said that when he broke up with Frank, and she had been pleased when he found Veronica at a Ministry gathering. Veronica had been leaning against a wall by herself, and had made a sarcastic remark about the color of the Minister's robes when Harry joined her. Harry had laughed, and made a joke back. By the end of the night, they'd made each other laugh several times and Harry had bought her a drink. He had hoped this one might work out.

But now...

Maybe it was weak, maybe it was stupid, but Harry had made every adjustment he could think of in the last year to make himself better, and it still hadn't _worked_. He had practiced sex with Muggles until he'd probably slept with a hundred people, but the only thing he was really good at was oral sex. He could make a man or a woman come with his mouth.

_Just not with the rest of my body._

The glamours were always over his scars. The potions the Healers had given him had gained him some of the muscle mass that should have been his, but never the height. Harry had tried not to be disappointed by that.

And he had tried to find a combination of potions and spells that would soothe the nightmares and the stupid way he still tended to react to some things, like being shut in a small dark space. He had tried to talk to Mind-Healers, too, but he couldn't find one who felt comfortable to him, like they were talking to a person instead of the Boy-Who-Lived or someone broken and traumatized beyond repair.

None of it was enough.

And Harry was just _tired _of it all. If all the changes he could think of, and all the advice he could take, wasn't working, then he thought-

_I reckon it's Muggles. Not wizards. _

No. He couldn't date another wizard, or witch. He couldn't go through the pain of this kind of rejection again, from someone who actually knew what he was. He felt the same deep, tearing agony that he would if Ron or Hermione had suddenly decided they didn't want to be his friend.

He knew that wasn't because of Veronica, so much as at the idea of losing all chance of a permanent partner to settle down with, but that didn't _matter_. It was so bad, so intense, that he ended up staggering to the toilet and vomiting after all. Then he slid down the wall and hunched into himself, his arms tucked around his stomach.

This was...

This was the end of dating in the wizarding world. He would figure out some way of handling his needs among the Muggles.

* * *

The _Daily Prophet _and half of Harry's co-workers didn't accept it, of course.

Harry had never realized how much pleasure some of the people around him took in betting on his dates, whether they would last long, whether he would stay with this person, whether they would be with a man or a woman. They kept stopping by his cubicle and urging him to give it just "one more try." They had a cousin who was perfect, a sister who was single, a nephew who was dying to meet the Boy-Who-Lived...

But that was it, Harry noticed. They always offered up someone else as the sacrifice to Harry's mixture of fame and ugliness. They never wanted to date him themselves, even when they were single and let their eyes linger on him when they thought he wasn't looking. They knew him too well.

And the _Daily Prophet _reporters took to following him around, looking for signs of a secret lover, a rendezvous, partners that he spent too much time with. Hermione and Ron and the rest of the Weasleys could ignore the articles, luckily, especially the ones that implied Harry was sleeping with all his friends in turn. But Harry curtailed his visits to the Muggle world for a little while, until the whispering began to die down. The last thing he needed was some enterprising reporter following him and recognizing him in his Muggle guise, flattened hair and brown eyes and scarless skin and all.

At last it began to pass off. There just wasn't anyone who cared much anymore, outside of Harry's friends, and they accepted his reasons for not dating. Reluctantly, but when Hermione saw what happened to his face when she pushed, she stopped. And none of the others was as persistent.

Harry began to breathe again as the months passed and no one showed any sign of knowing that he went to Muggle clubs regularly. All he ever did there was give blowjobs or lick a woman to orgasm, but that would have been enough to start speculation, if it became known.

Not that it had been, he slowly came to accept. Not that it would.

He was a celebrity and people were interested in his dating life for that reason, but no one except his best friends and adopted family knew who he _really _was. So no one was that interested in looking that far beneath the surface. They wanted the delicious gossip, the stories, but not a story that didn't have an end and was as disappointing as the truth.

So Harry settled into a life that was far from the one he wanted, but was more comfortable. And he had a certain degree of pride in how far he had come in mastering the difficult glamour magic, and how good he was with his mouth, if not any other part of his body. It had worked out, sort of.

He wasn't happy, he would never be without someone of his own, permanently, but he was content.

Trust Draco Malfoy to come along and ruin it all.


	2. Prudence

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two-Prudence_

"I just think it's strange, that's all."

Draco sighed and laid down the _Daily Prophet. _He read it at all only as a diversion while his potions finished brewing, but this morning, it was unusually inarticulate about contemporary scandals. Apparently only one new witness had come forwards about that little affair between Head Auror Dawlish and his undersecretary, and he had turned out not to have any new gossip, although the paper was trying to spin out the fumes of what there was. "What do you think is strange, Daphne?"

As he had suspected, pretending he hadn't paid _any _attention made Daphne narrow her eyes at him and reach for the heavy green vase on his desk that Draco kept the results of failed potions in, to see what color they would turn when the next substance was added. Draco raised his eyebrows and waited. The wards around the vase gathered into a crackling cloud of energy and Daphne snatched her hand back just in time.

"Fine, you don't need something thrown at you," she sniffed, folding her hands on her knee and smoothing her green silk robe. "But I was talking about Harry Potter." She laughed softly as Draco sat up. "You still listen to everything that involves him, you know."

Draco said nothing as he smoothed his own hand over the paper he had laid down on his desk. Perhaps it had begun to seem boring to him when it stopped carrying regular stories about Potter, that was true. And perhaps he had hoped for some more _acknowledgment _than Potter's nod in the corridors, for the respectable citizen he had become and the high position he had achieved in the Ministry, if not the boy he had been.

But he would not let Daphne make it into a vehicle to tease him. So he looked at her and said, "I imagine that Astoria would be as interested in learning about who was behind her swollen lips last month as she would be in learning about what I think of Potter."

Daphne shifted to the side. "There's no need to be hasty, at all. And no need to make this a public conversation."

Draco smiled, all teeth. "I'm glad you think so. Now. What's strange?"

"This oath they say Potter has taken, to never date wizards." Daphne leaned towards him, her eyes taking on that sparkle they always did when talking about someone else. Daphne was one of the few people Draco knew who seemed more interested in what other people did than she was in herself. "Only Muggles, although no one's ever seen him with one. But given that he hasn't exploded with sexual frustration, he _must _have a Muggle lover. The _Prophet _and _Witch Weekly _have both tied themselves in knots trying to figure out who."

Draco blinked. "I never heard that about an oath. And I know he dates witches, too." The last interesting story he remembered about Potter was from some time ago, when he'd broken up with that Tobley woman he met at a Ministry function.

"I didn't mean that," Daphne said, shaking her head. "No dates for a year. He was all over the papers before that, and he couldn't go a month without someone new in his bed. Aren't you slightly _curious _about who he's sleeping with now?"

Draco considered for a moment, and then nodded. "But I still think the oath story is nonsense. Perhaps no one has offered himself or herself up to his Gryffindor high standards since Veronica Tobley."

Daphne rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on, Draco. I know that no decent person would look twice at her, but that doesn't mean Tobley wasn't the _Gryffindor_ ideal. All honest and forthright and true and steadfast. There's no reason that he would cast her aside unless there was some kind of problem there. And even if she didn't match up to his standards, the Ministry swarms with that type now. He'd find _someone_."

_A year? _Was _it that long? _Draco felt the wings of his curiosity stretch themselves. Yes, he had noted the disappearance of stories, but he hadn't thought much about it. If Potter became less interesting to the public, then that meant Draco's desire for acknowledgment from him, and interest in him, also lessened. It wasn't like Draco would learn about Potter's daily activities from anything other than gossip.

"Where did you get this nonsense about a promise, though?" Draco asked. He propped up his boots on his desk and checked the _Tempus _Charm that would give him an idea of how long was left on his potion. Still half the sand in the bottom bulb, better than he had expected. "Say it was a problem between him and Tobley. That wouldn't make it a promise never to date wizards again."

Daphne frowned a little. "Well, it was from Theo."

Draco sighed. "Daphne, when has Theo _ever _been trustworthy about anything in this new era?"

Daphne laughed and repeated the Ministry's other name for the time since the war back to him in a delicate, excited voice, like the one that Minister Louisa Henley tended to use. "This exciting time for wizarding kind has seen him make a terrible lapse of taste, true, but you know his little Hufflepuff works in the Leaky Cauldron. All sorts of people come through there, and leave tidbits behind. Some of them even try to pay for their drinks with information."

Draco tilted his head to the side and tucked a finger beneath his chin. "I'm trying to calculate the distance between Potter and Theo's Hufflepuff," he said. "I'm afraid it's too great for even my sophisticated mind to encompass."

Daphne rolled her eyes at him. "No, it's not substantial, but it makes the most sense of anything we've heard so far. And Potter _has _been less maudlin of late, you note. No outbursts of the kind that the _Prophet _likes to report on. Maybe he's come to terms with the fact that no wizard will ever want to do anything other than lick his boots or spit on them, and he's taken a Muggle lover."

"All right, so I might care," Draco pointed out. "But why do _you_?"

Daphne grinned. "Do you _know _how much the information would be worth if I could find out and take it directly to Skeeter? And I could use a new broom. That last one got crippled in my race with Pansy. Absolutely useless, half the bristles gone."

Draco hesitated. The money didn't tempt him as much as it did Daphne. He would never be as rich as he had been before this new and exciting era, but he still had plenty of money, and the coin of reputation had always been more important.

On the other hand, knowledge was power. And knowledge about Potter seemed to be in rare supply these days.

Of course, his reputation meant he couldn't be seen to be actively looking, either. So he settled back in his chair and flapped his hand at Daphne. "Enjoy the hunt, if you like. I have other things to do."

Daphne sniffed at him and swept out of his office. Draco looked slowly around at the few framed pictures of his family he'd placed, one on each wall, and the framed awards for his competency since he'd joined the Potions Division.

So. He had part of what he wanted, but not all. And a burning glare from Potter for digging into his secrets would be better than the nonexistent acknowledgment he was getting now.

_Why not at least try?_

* * *

"But you must know _something_."

Edmund Thatcher shook his head and belched, wiping his mouth with one hand. "No, sorry, Malfoy. I would tell you if I could, you know? You're offering me money that's good enough." He eyed Draco for a moment, and then leered. "And that isn't the _only _attraction."

Draco held himself rigid in his seat. He would sooner sleep with a house-elf than a man who bit his nails ragged, but he knew better than to show that. Otherwise, he wouldn't find out what Thatcher, who had been Potter's Auror partner for six months, ending four months ago, already knew.

Thatcher cleared his throat, as though he realized he had crossed the line, and sipped self-consciously at his Firewhisky again. They were behind several privacy wards at a table in the corner of the Leaky Cauldron. Draco wouldn't have said it was the ideal place for privacy, but it was the one place he and Thatcher could probably meet without being remarked on. Thatcher had left Potter behind a whole change of partners ago, and he was known to have some Potions knowledge because his father had been a brewer. Who would care if he and Potions master Draco Malfoy wanted to meet for a quiet chat?

"No," Thatcher continued, "I left before that nonsense about an oath got out. I don't think there ever was one, though. One day he was dating wizards, and the next day he wasn't. I started working with him after he stopped dating Veronica."

"Veronica," Draco murmured. "Have you dated her yourself? You seem to know her quite well."

Thatcher gave what could be called a bashful blush on anyone who wanted to lie, and dropped his eyes to the table. "A time or two," he said. "Too much woman for me, though. Not surprised she was too much woman for Potter."

Draco stood up to go and get another Firewhisky-the wards were designed so only someone leaving them from inside could part them-and returned with it soon enough that Thatcher hadn't even finished his last mug. Draco plopped the drink on the table and took his own chair, eyes lowered as he traced figure eights in the rings of moisture on the wood. It wouldn't do to let Thatcher suspect that his last words had sent fire through Draco's veins. "Too much woman for Potter? I shouldn't have thought he was the type to let himself be intimidated by anything."

Thacher combined a belch and a sneer, in a way that Draco didn't entirely understand but knew better than to inquire about. "Then you _don't _know him that well. Working with him taught me things." He gave a nod that would have been more impressive three drinks ago, and continued after a long guzzle from the latest Firewhisky. "Taught me that he's more scared than he lets on. That he's _less _than he lets on."

Draco blinked, and wondered for a moment if Thatcher had been a Slytherin at Hogwarts. His former Housemates were the only ones he was accustomed to hearing speak of Potter with that lack of respect in their voices. "Less? How? More-more base?" It was somehow hard to think of Potter with secret vices. _Petty _vices, anyway. There had been a time Draco could have imagined him doing something grand and desperate as payback for the wizarding world's constant suspicions of him.

"No," Thatcher said, stretching the word out as he gulped again. Draco drew his hands back from the splatters of spit and whisky combined that flew in his direction, but didn't take his eyes from Thatcher's muddy blue ones. "He's just more scared, that's all. More ordinary. More quiet. Doesn't like to talk about the war."

Draco stared at Thatcher in silence. He wondered for a moment why Thatcher had thought Potter would _like _talking about the war.

Then he remembered the way Daphne, and Pansy, and Theo, and Blaise, when the talk drifted around to Potter, all assumed he would spend every minute of the day bragging about his fame. He frowned and settled further back in his seat, this time for a different reason than because he wanted to avoid Thatcher's spluttering. "Why would he?" he asked, trying a direct question to see what happened to Thatcher when he was confronted with it.

Thatcher rolled his eyes. "Oh, come _on_. All the heroic things he did? The _Prophet _doesn't talk about then anymore except on the anniversaries." He pronounced the last word carefully, thought about it, then nodded, satisfied. "Uh course he'd want to keep it in front of people."

Draco said nothing for a bit, thinking, while Thatcher finished most of the next mug. Then he said, "And Tobley?"

"She's all flash and fire," Thatcher said, and his eyes shone. "A _real _woman. I think she got fed up when Potter wouldn't talk about a single good thing he did. And didja know he tries to keep what he does _now _hushed up?"

"He's an Auror, not an Unspeakable."

"Ha!" Thatcher slapped the table hard enough to make his mug leap into the air. Draco enchanted it quickly not to spill. "Good one, Malfoy. Good one. I'll have to remember that." Once again Thatcher paused to moisten his mouth, and Draco strangled his impatience. "But, I mean, I mean..."

His voice trailed off, and Draco concealed a sigh and prompted him, "He tries to hush up something he does now?"

"Right, right," Thatcher said, head bobbing as he focused on Draco again. "He doesn't care who brings 'em down, him or someone else. He doesn't keep track of the people he arrests. He doesn't _care_ if he gets credit. Is that weird or what?"

Draco sighed to himself, a breath of air so quiet that he knew Thatcher was likely to mistake it for something else. It would have been strange to a Slytherin like Daphne, yes. "Maybe he's done enough in his lifetime that he doesn't care about credit anymore," he had to suggest, because Thatcher looked as if he might wave his hand in front of Draco's eyes to get a response to his words.

"I don't think so," Thatcher said, with a broad wink that made Draco's skin crawl. "I think that he has some secrets, and he doesn't want to make a big deal of himself anymore. In case s-_someone _pries." He coughed and nodded and took another drink.

After that, as Draco had suspected it would be, the interrogation was a waste of time. Thatcher was good at sounding mysterious enough that people would buy him Firewhisky, but nothing else. Draco eventually left him slumped over the table in the Leaky Cauldron and stepped out into the night, filling his lungs with clean and cold air, and his eyes with the sight of the stars.

Well. It seemed that he would have to try another route to Potter's secrets. Some of the obvious ones were closed to him. Weasley and Granger undoubtedly knew all about it, but it wasn't like they would welcome Draco's asking.

Draco smiled. Good thing that he had repaired some of the problems with cleverness and courage he'd had when he was a child.

* * *

"I haven't heard of you before. Why should I trust you?"

Draco gave a smile at Veronica Tobley that he knew was melting and winsome, because he had practiced it in a mirror until it should be so. The glamour just above his skin wavered and danced like water, covering his features and body and clothes, but letting expressions through. "You don't have to trust me with anything deep the first time," he whispered, and held up the notebook he'd brought along. "But I'm just a young reporter trying to establish an alternative to Rita Skeeter for the people, _our _people, the ones who saw what she did during the war and don't want to read her anymore. It comes down to a question of who you'd rather trust, I suppose."

Tobley studied him for a short time. Draco smiled back again, confident of what she would see: a young witch with long brown hair, lavender silk robes, and deep blue eyes. Because the glamour was so different from what Draco normally looked like, it had actually been easier than if he had wanted to match the glamours to his body. But he _had _established a job in "Tracy Nettle's" name at the _Daily Prophet. _If Tobley firecalled them, she would learn that Nettle was a very junior reporter indeed, but a real one.

Finally, Tobley snorted and turned her back, leading Draco deeper into the house. "Fine. Come on."

Draco rolled his eyes as he followed her. _What a gracious welcome. I think the reasons Potter didn't stay with her are simpler than Thatcher thinks._

Tobley's house was all wood on the inside, from the furniture to the walls. Draco exclaimed, a genuine exclamation as well as part of his persona, over the delicate wooden horses prancing along the mantle. They represented a carving skill that Draco wasn't familiar with. "I simply _must _get the name of the artist who made these for you," he said, turning around and directing another vacuous beam at Tobley.

Tobley smiled back at him, taking a rocking chair not far from the fireplace. "I made them myself, actually."

Draco let his voice babble on about his admiration, while he examined Tobley closely. She was pretty enough, he supposed. She might have a sense of humor. She had some courage, or perhaps some foolish trust, in allowing a reporter into her house this soon, before she had firecalled to see if the reporter was real. Of course, Draco's deception would have taken care of her suspicions even if she had called first, because Draco was cleverer than she was. But it was the _principle _of the thing.

But, again, he thought he could see why Potter mightn't have stayed with her for long.

"I wanted to ask you about your activities in the Ministry," Draco said, taking another rocking chair opposite from Tobley's, and acting as though he was enjoying having his feet suddenly swept off the floor. "Specifically, whether it actually _works, _dating other Ministry employees."

Tobley rolled her eyes. "You might as well just _say _that you came about my affair with Harry Potter. Lots of other people have."

"But have you let any of them into your house?" Draco asked, and tried the sly smile this time, although since Nettle wasn't supposed to be all that smart, he hadn't practiced it as much as the open ones. "I think something about me appeals to you."

It was a risk, but it worked. After a few frozen seconds staring at him, Tobley nodded, seemingly against her will. "You do seem as though you care about other things than gossip," she muttered. "But I could be wrong."

"You're not wrong." Draco sat up, hating the rocking chair that made him look less serious, and aimed his quill at her. "I want to start a series of articles on _real _working conditions in the Ministry. And I heard-well, they seemed like ridiculous rumors, but some of the most ridiculous things turn out to be the truth, don't they? Someone told me that they're _sacrificing_ people at the Ministry to Harry Potter's appetite, coercing them to date him. I think nearly everyone he's spent time with is from the Ministry, right?"

Tobley's eyes widened a little. Draco smiled at her, and said nothing of his contempt. Right after being told that Nettle didn't gossip, Tobley heard her gossip, and of course fell for the trap rather than noting the hypocrisy.

"It's true that all of us except for Ginny Weasley were Ministry employees," Tobley whispered, brushing her hand down her own long hair. "She plays Quidditch now. But...there's no evil reason for it," she said, bringing her gaze up to Draco's again. "It's just that he spends a lot of time in the Ministry as an Auror, and he meets most people he could date there. He couldn't date _suspects. _I think he would probably be most comfortable with his best friends, if they hadn't already found each other. Merlin knows they might be the only ones who can tolerate him."

Draco sat up and smoothed down his robes. "He has bad habits in bed?" he murmured, in a voice meant to induce a confession.

Tobley hesitated for a long second, looking out her window. Draco obediently looked with her, but saw nothing save a sun-stained garden. He supposed it was pretty enough, for someone who didn't seem to have house-elves to tend to her needs. Draco had already seen more dust than he would expect to encounter in an elf-tended household.

"I've done enough, I think," Tobley said.

Draco tightened his hold on his quill and notebook, fearing for a moment that Tobley meant she had betrayed Potter enough and would cast him out. But Tobley turned towards him instead, her face set and her eyes so dark that Draco thought he could see some of the depths that might have attracted Potter to her.

"I've kept quiet about it," Tobley said. "I haven't betrayed him. And I still won't give you any details that could hurt him," she added, maybe because she had seen Draco sit up and thought he would require some. "But it's been a year now. He seems to have stopped dating altogether. Maybe-maybe if I tell you something about what happened, then he can find _someone _else he can get along with. He deserves to be happy."

Draco kept from bouncing in his chair and cackling with glee only with a strong effort. He never would have _imagined _something like this. It was better than any lie he could have come up with tell her, especially because she was convincing _herself_. He waited, though, only licking his lips a little to show Nettle's eagerness.

Tobley looked straight at Draco. "Did you know he uses glamours on his scars?" she asked.

Draco blinked and scribbled that down. "No, I didn't. But not on the lightning bolt scar, surely? So many people know that's there."

Tobley shrugged a little. "Sometimes he used it there when we went out in public and he didn't want to be mobbed. But mostly, it's these scars on his body that he got from the war. And before that, I suppose." Her mouth twisted. "There's a scar on the back of his hand that I _know _is from a Blood Quill. Words that spell out _I must not tell lies._"

Draco stared with his mouth open. For once, his reaction and his persona's were the same. Of course he had known about Umbridge inflicting the punishment of a Blood Quill on Potter, but it had never occurred to him that the scar could still be present. Wouldn't Potter have gone to a Healer and had it removed? Or, well, that wouldn't be an option with repeated carving, but there must have been more punishments than Draco knew if the scars were permanent.

He wrote that down, too, and recorded a few of the other scars that Tobley told him about: a round circle on Potter's chest, a scar on his throat, marks that Tobley thought came from snake fangs. Tobley described each of them with precision, and then leaned forwards and said, "You should know-he's skinny, too, skinnier than he should be. There were rumors of mistreatment by his Muggle family, but I don't know for sure. He never _trusted _me enough to tell me for sure."

Draco wrote this down, too. Then he said, "You should know-some of this information is so important and so inflammatory that they might not let me publish my article."

"Then you should get the information out by some other means," Tobley muttered at him, reaching out to clutch his hand. "Because someone who doesn't care about looks or who's attracted to scars could make him happy, but they have to _know_, first. I couldn't do it."

Draco didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. Wasn't it only shallow Slytherins who were supposed to care about things like scars? Tobley wasn't making a very good representation for her side, the people who weren't Slytherins and had nice, proper, upright jobs without a bit of bribery and supposedly only cared about a person's _inner _beauty.

Perhaps reading his mood if not his mind, Tobley folded her arms and snapped, "I really did think that I didn't care about things like that. But what happened to him is so extreme...and he has lots of nightmares, too. It got to the point where we _slept _separately no matter what we'd been doing before. I just couldn't stand being woken up by him, and he couldn't stand waking me up."

Draco bowed his head so that he would look very serious and dedicated as he wrote that down, but in truth, it only confirmed his impression that Tobley was less impressive than she thought she was. She couldn't stand Potter's nightmares. Had she stood up to him and told him that? Had she procured Dreamless Sleep Potion for Potter? No. She had simply walked away, and now tried to justify it in her cringing way.

Draco was starting to believe that Potter's refusing to date wizards had nothing to do with a vow, but just with bad experiences with the lot of them.

Tobley called his attention back with a long sigh. "I know you probably don't believe me," she murmured, staring at Draco. "You think I'm exaggerating, or that the benefits of living with such a great hero outweigh the disadvantages. But it really wasn't all that fun. The constant striving, the constant decision about whether to tell him that he was _horrible _in bed when I knew that would hurt his feelings, and the way I flinched when I looked at him. It wasn't easy for me, either."

Draco smiled. "I'm sure it wasn't," he said in Nettle's voice. "What made him so horrible in bed?"

Tobley flushed. "I don't know if that's the sort of thing that could go in a newspaper article," she muttered.

Draco laid aside his notebook and quill and stared so intently at Tobley that she stared back as if compelled by a snake. "But it might fit in a book," Draco said. "I should tell you frankly, I want to publish these articles, but I _think _the _Prophet _will be too afraid of the public taste to risk it. But I do think the truth should be told about the greatest hero of our time. The unpolished truth. Who knows him, really? All we know are the half-truths and the assumptions. Like the way that you said most people would assume being with Auror Potter would be full of benefits. That's _so _true. But if it isn't really true, then people ought to know it. Don't you think?"

Tobley blinked a little, and then said, "Did he give you permission to write this? Because he said that he always hated biographies and the people who wanted to write biographies of him."

"It wouldn't be a biography," Draco said, flinging his hands up in Nettle's dismay. "It would be the _truth, _that's all, the words spoken by the people who know him best. I'm planning to interview his Gryffindor friends, too."

He saw the moment when those words convinced Tobley, the way she relaxed and the smile of amused contempt she gave him. She knew, screamed her whole posture, that Potter's friends would never talk about him, and Nettle's project was doomed before it started.

But that did its part, the reason Draco had chosen that particular lie. It convinced her that _she _could unburden herself and tell someone about it, because the article or the book would never go to press. The only people who would hear her say it were Nettle and herself.

"Well," Tobley said. "He never seemed to get how hard he should be. You know," she added, casting Draco a look under her eyelashes that Draco took a moment to interpret. He finally realized that it was the way he had seen Pansy look at Daphne sometimes, when they were discussing "woman things" that they thought no man could understand. That amused him so much he almost missed Tobley's next words. "How hard he should _push_. He hurt me several times."

"You didn't correct him?" Draco put a hand to his mouth as though to hide horrified astonishment.

"It was so hard," Tobley said, ducking her head. "He always asked me all the time if it was good for me. He wanted to make me _come_. He was good with his mouth, I'll give him that. I don't know why he learned to be good at that and he was so horrible at all the other things. Sometimes he would hold his breath in the middle of having sex, and never realize it at the time. Or he would—you know, come early himself, and then be horrified. It was a little overwhelming, having all that anxiety directed at you."

"It must have been," Draco said, nodding with wide eyes, while in his head he wanted to howl and cackle. _Potter's premature?_

"Or he would try to flirt, and he didn't know how to do it well," Tobley continued, sighing. "He would say these horrible lines, and then smile at you like you were supposed to swoon in his arms. Or he would tell you these truths that just weren't _appropriate. _You could tell that kind of thing to someone you'd dated for years, but not two months."

"Like the stories of his times in the war?" Draco asked, trying to look as sympathetic as he could.

"Or the way people talked to him at the Ministry." Tobley nodded, curling her arms around her knees. "I know that he needs to talk to someone about that, but it should have been a Healer, not me. I didn't know how to respond. And then he would get upset because he distressed me. And the only way he knows how to kiss is _wet_. Not good with his mouth at that particular thing, he bloody isn't." She shook her head and hid behind her hair. "And all the time, I'm trying not to upset him," she said in a muffled voice, "and that just made things _worse_."

Draco sighed with her, letting her think that Nettle was the most sympathetic woman she had ever met, not just a witch looking for a story. Then Draco shook his head and settled back in his chair. "Do you think that someone could be with him who knew exactly what was going on with him?"

"I hope so," Tobley said. "As I mentioned at the beginning of the interview." She gave Draco a harsh look, and Draco ducked his head and murmured apologies. "I do hope that whatever you write gets published. He deserves happiness."

_And he stands a chance of finding it, perhaps, if you aren't involved, _Draco thought.

They talked for a half an hour more, but Tobley mostly repeated what she had already said and hinted coyly around at the edges of bigger mysteries, things that Draco wasn't interested in learning about unless she stated them outright. When he stood up to leave, Tobley reached out and pressed his hand.

"Give him some peace, if you can," she murmured.

Draco held back the semi-hysterical laughter that wanted to escape—_that _was the kind of wish Tobley had for Potter after she had just betrayed him?—and contented himself with nodding. "I will," he promised.

_If only by providing a contrast with all the rottenness he's endured._

* * *

Draco sighed as he leaned back and propped his feet up on the second chair before the fireplace. One of his friends would usually occupy it, but Draco found himself alone more often than usual this week, given the complicated potions he was brewing and his pursuit of the secret truths about Potter.

Those truths seemed more mundane and stranger the longer he considered them. Rejection of Potter for poor kissing skills and scars?

Of course, he had no particular reason to think that Tobley was lying, and there were rumors circulating that Potter was a poor lover. As always, no one could say _exactly _who had spread the rumors, and there was no reason to believe them over others, but Draco had started to accept them. He might as well...

What?

Unlike Daphne, he had no real need of the reward money for finding out the truth about Potter's Muggle lover. And he had no intention of publishing the material he had collected from Tobley. That was a convenient lie, no more.

What he _did _want was Potter's acknowledgment, as always. And although he had never considered it before, he had to admit now that Potter's admiration for his Potions skills was unlikely. Why? Potter had never understood the art of Potions in any form, or he would have done better in Professor Snape's class. And he had shown that he wasn't susceptible to Draco's charm or good looks alone. Nor did Draco, although he had stayed out of trouble since the war, have an exemplary life of Gryffindor-like virtue to present to him.

He might as well see if he could get Potter's acknowledgment for being a better lover than the rubbish he'd dealt with so far.

"So it's decided," Draco said, and toasted the air, because there was no understanding friend there to listen at the moment but he needed to say _something _aloud, to mark the extraordinary change. "Tomorrow, I ask Harry Potter on a date."

* * *

"I think Malfoy's aiming for you, mate."

Ron's voice was low, but Harry had long since perfected the art of listening for the truth behind it, and he had to tense and roll his shoulders. Ron used a certain tone when he meant someone was coming over with the intention of asking him out.

_Please, no. _The proposals had faltered in the last few months, and Harry had enjoyed the peace. Besides, what could Malfoy want with him?

_A challenge._

Harry grunted. Of course. One of the more ridiculous rumors about why Harry didn't date in the wizarding world had probably reached Malfoy's ears, and he had decided that he was the perfect one to try to attack that barrier and break it down.

At least he was prepared, and could look up with the kind of bright, false smile he reserved for people stupid enough to try and date him as Malfoy came to a height beside his desk and said, "Can I talk to you for a minute, Harry?"

_Not even Auror Potter? _Harry stood up and shrugged. Malfoy was being more direct than he had thought he would, but then, even Malfoys changed over the years. He probably thought Harry was still the sort of naïve person who wouldn't understand an invitation to dinner unless he was hit over the head with it. "Of course, Malfoy," he said, and walked away from the desk as Malfoy motioned him towards a little-frequented corner of the Auror office.

He could feel Ron's stare locked on his back. Harry didn't turn around and make an obscene gesture at him, but it was hard. For fuck's sake, Ron knew where they were going, and who Harry was with. If Malfoy tried to dismember Harry and use him in some obscure Dark ritual in the next ten minutes, Ron knew enough to stop it in time.

When they were in the corner formed by two desks and a cubicle, Malfoy turned around and faced him, casting a Privacy Ward. Harry lounged against the wall and watched him. He wondered who Malfoy thought he was facing, and guessed, from the intense look on his face, that it was the Gryffindor child. The one he could easily conquer.

Well, he couldn't. Because Harry knew what he himself was really like now, thanks to Frank and Veronica and the others. Not a beautiful person; not a graceful person; not a particularly good person. Malfoy could try to flatter Harry or dangle a mysterious bait in front of him or offer the chance for Harry to redeem him, but all of those tactics depended on Harry still being prone to believe flattery and jump at the first chance to do something virtuous.

_Not now. I know myself._

Wearing all his weaknesses on the surface was its own kind of armor, Harry thought. So he waited patiently for Malfoy to get to the point, and Malfoy opened his mouth and surprised him.

"I wondered if you wanted to go on a date."

Harry blinked. _Huh_. So it had been that direct proposal he had first envisioned, after all. He wondered why Malfoy was bothering.

He opened his mouth to ask, but Malfoy spoke, slow and intent and so close that Harry could feel the words more than he could hear them. "I know a little about why your last lovers were so unsatisfactory. I want to show you that not _all _wizards are rubbish, and someone can actually be good in the bedroom." He pulled back enough to stare at Harry, probably the same stare he gave everyone he was trying to seduce.

Harry stood there and hoped that he looked as if he was contemplating Malfoy's ridiculous offer, when really, shock kept him still. That was _it_? Malfoy was fighting for the honor of the wizarding community to be in Harry's bed?

Then understanding came along, and softened Harry's muscles. No, of course not. This was personal, as it always was, because what did Malfoy understand about belonging to the larger wizarding community and tending to other people's perceptions of you, the way Harry did? Malfoy wanted to be acknowledged for his skills as a lover. Maybe by Harry, maybe by Harry and also by other people in the Ministry who would think him skilled indeed to seduce the withdrawn Harry Potter.

Figuring it out, Harry cocked his head. He actually wasn't tempted to cancel the Privacy Ward and cast Malfoy out of the corner, as he thought he would have been.

He had fun with Muggles, but none of them could know who he really was. Not the scar, but the _magic, _was what Harry couldn't tell them about. And he had to admit, the one-night stands where he used his mouth on someone else, wanked, and then retreated before they could find out how terrible he was with other things had started to get repetitive.

At least if he went out with Malfoy, they could go somewhere in the wizarding world and Harry would have a different view of things for a little while. He smiled as he decided that he would get Malfoy to pay for the dinner.

And giving Malfoy blowjobs wouldn't be _that _unacceptable. Harry eyed him. Malfoy wasn't as tall as his father, but that was all to the good, as far as Harry was concerned; he didn't want to think of Lucius when he was blowing Malfoy. He had loose golden hair, and grey eyes it wouldn't be a hardship to look into. Besides, Harry had got good at judging people, and he thought Malfoy was probably the kind of person who would close his eyes during sex.

A bit of variety, a casual sort of thing. The chance to use magic to clean up and prepare his mouth, and if Malfoy gossiped…how could the casual gossip be worse than the truths Harry had already endured? And if Malfoy became obnoxious in his desire for Harry to tell him what a great lover he was, Harry thought he could lie a few times and stop seeing him if he became more bothersome than entertaining.

Besides, there was the chance to take a bit of wind out of his sails now.

"Okay," he said.

Malfoy reeled back a step from him. Harry grinned. _He didn't expect me to agree._

"What?" Malfoy breathed.

Harry ran a hand down his cheek. "You're cute when you're startled. And I said yes. I'll meet you in the Leaky Cauldron at seven tonight. We can decide where we want to go from there. But I expect you to pay for whatever expensive pure-blood-catering restaurant you'll insist we attend," he added, and turned his back on Malfoy. He still gaped at Harry as Harry walked back to his desk and his work.

"What did you do?" Ron insisted, before Harry could do so much as pick up a sheet of parchment.

"I said yes," Harry said, and then had to roll his eyes. Ron was _not _cute when he was startled, mainly because Harry could see his tonsils.

"Mate, what," Ron began, when he had recovered breath and teeth enough to speak.

Harry shook his head at him, and Ron shut up, although he continued to peer at Harry worriedly. "I don't want to hear it," Harry said, quietly, firmly. "I did it because I thought it might be fun, to foil his expectations if nothing else." If Malfoy had really heard about Harry's past experiences and it was the truth rather than rumor, then he would be expecting Harry to be a nervous, hesitant idiot grateful for the slightest bit of sexual attention. Harry was going to change _that _perception right quick. "And he can't hurt me, Ron. I'm beyond him now."

He began to work, aware of Ron still staring worriedly at the back of his neck. Well, so be it. Harry didn't blame his friends. He knew they just wanted for everything to work out for him, and for him to be as happy as they were.

But it wasn't going to happen, not in the sexual arena. Harry was just built differently. This liaison with Malfoy was a bit of newness, which he was doing for himself, not Malfoy.

He looked up as Malfoy came out of the corner. He gave Harry a single intense look before he spun on his heel and stalked back into the corridors that led towards the Potions Division.

Harry snorted and bent over his papers again. Well, if it wasn't what _Malfoy _anticipated, then he could dump Harry, and Harry would be no worse off than he had been.

_Either way, I win._


	3. Courage

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Courage_

"I hope you know what you're doing."

Harry winked at Hermione. He was standing in front of the large mirror he'd put up in his drawing room, so that he could make sure he didn't look too strange before he Flooed to work in the morning, and Hermione's face was floating in the fireplace behind him. "Of course I know what I'm doing," he said, and turned slightly to the side to admire the hang of his cloak.

"I haven't seen you preen this way before." Hermione was giving him a steady look. Harry was used to returning those with impunity, though, including the gaze of his own eyes in the mirror now. He would come home after plenty of those one-night stands with Muggles and look into his own face, to make sure that he didn't look too needy. Most of the time, things were okay.

The times that it wasn't, Harry stayed home for a few nights and reminded himself that this wasn't about romance.

_And neither is this._

"It's my first date with a wizard in quite some time," Harry said, spinning away from the mirror and patting the little shelf he'd attached to the wall in front of it for luck. "I think I should take some more care with my appearance, don't you?"

"Not if it's _Malfoy_."

Harry blinked, then laughed. "Ron infected you with his disdain for the whole plan, didn't he?"

"What plan?" Hermione leaned forwards as if she was going to transform the firecall into actually coming over any minute. "As far as I can tell, you're dating Malfoy because you like to shock people, and because you think you might get decent sex out of him."

Harry raised his eyebrows. Well, it was true that Hermione was more honest about sex than Ron, and could discuss it, and even sex that other people were having, without turning the color of a forest on fire. "Not really. I'm doing it because I'll be with someone who knows that I'm a wizard, knows my history, and won't be surprised if I do magic or refer to the war. It's one kind of freedom to be with Muggles, having no one know who I am, but I was getting tired of it." He shrugged. "I thought I would try this different kind of freedom for a while."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione whispered, her eyes darkening. "You really don't expect any more than that, do you?"

Harry shook his head impatiently. "Like you pointed out, Hermione, this is _Malfoy_. He came up and asked me out for his own reasons. I'm almost positive that those had to do with getting me to 'appreciate' him the way I never did when we were kids. I don't know if I'm even going to have more than one date with him. Freedom might not be enough to make up for his taunts, and his obnoxiousness."

Hermione fussed with her hands for a moment, not meeting his eyes. "I just hate that you're reduced to this," she muttered.

"Reduced? I _chose _this." Harry put his hand out. "I could have chosen to keep pursing people in the wizarding world. I could have chosen to reject Malfoy. But I didn't do either, and here we are."

Hermione sighed again, and then said, "Yes, I understand. And I know that your happiness is yours to choose, and that I shouldn't interfere."

Harry smiled at her. "I know it's just because you're worried." He had thought it would be hard to make Hermione understand why he was giving up on love, as she saw it, but she had been surprisingly accepting once Harry refused the books and simply shut the Floo or the door if she tried to lecture.

"Yes, it is," Hermione said. She hesitated one more time. Then she said, "Malfoy did always manage to pull intense emotion out of you. Do you think…?"

Harry shook his head, hoping that his face didn't show the pity he felt for Hermione too clearly. "No. Whatever he wants from me, he came on too strongly and too openly for it to be natural. And even if he felt attracted to me for some reason, why do it now, after a year of my not dating anyone in the wizarding world, and so suddenly, without an attempt to get more comfortable with me first?" Harry snorted at the idea that Malfoy could be attracted to him. He knew what he looked like. He knew the sort of thing Malfoy aimed for. They didn't exist in the same universe.

"Fame, then?" Hermione's voice dipped again.

Harry nodded. "Most likely." He checked his watch, and flicked Hermione an apologetic smile. "I have to go."

"Sorry," Hermione murmured, and her face faded out of the fireplace. Harry stepped outside the house and engaged the wards with a swish of his wand. He had strengthened them a year ago, when he understood that he would never have to allow an exemption in them for anyone else ever again, except Hermione and Ron.

And there was a freedom in that knowledge, too. It meant that he was less likely to be betrayed, or to die because he had made a mistake in adjusting the wards and one of his fanatic enemies could creep through to murder him in his sleep.

_I'm not as happy as I wanted to be, but I'm safer. _

His mind firmly on the Leaky Cauldron, Harry Apparated to his date.

* * *

"Sorry that I'm a minute early."

Draco jerked his head up. He'd taken a seat near the door of the pub, sure that he would spot Potter the minute he entered. The room would go silent in that special way it did when a celebrity was nearing, the way Draco had long since accepted it would never go silent for him.

But Potter strolled up to him as though he was an ordinary person, dressed in dark green robes that looked like velvet, and nodded casually to him. "What place did you choose?" he asked, waiting while Draco scrambled to his feet.

Draco stared at him for a single second, and then shook his head and extended his arm. Potter looked down at it with his eyebrows raised in a way that made Draco feel utterly stupid. "Take it," he snapped, to cover that. "I can't Side-Along you otherwise."

"That's true," Potter said, and smiled as though Draco had done something vastly entertaining instead of slightly embarrassing. He rested his hand on Draco's arm, and it was lighter than Draco had known Potter could touch someone, or at least someone like Draco, who Potter probably despised as much now as he did when they were younger—

_And that can't be true, or he wouldn't have come along on this date. _

Draco cut the thoughts off, a little disgusted at himself for becoming that involved in the analysis of a simple _gesture. _He smiled at Potter, and hoped the smile would make up for the awkward start to the evening. "I didn't know what sort of food you would prefer, so I chose a restaurant I like."

"That's fine," Potter said, waving his hand. "I'm sure I won't have been to it before."

"That's right," Draco said, as he turned them on the spot and Apparated them. They arrived on the Apparition point outside the Sapphire Rose, and he dropped his hand to the small of Potter's back to escort him up the stairs. "You didn't often go to such places with the last wizard dates you had, did you?"

He felt the brief clench of the muscles under his hand, and then Potter turned his head and winked at him. "I think it's tiresome to talk about my old lovers when they've already bragged about themselves, don't you?" he asked casually. "I know that I don't find it a stimulating topic of conversation, at least. And I think you want some stimulation."

His hand slipped down and brushed Draco's groin.

Draco nearly stumbled, and not just because they were on the steps going up to the front of the Sapphire Rose and someone could have seen them, unlikely as that was with the dimness of the torches here. Potter was—going for _that_? He expected to have sex with Draco that soon?

It made no sense, if what Tobley had said about his incapacity in bed was true. Or had that had something to do with the fact that she was female and Draco male?

Potter didn't seem to think he had done anything unusual. He halted on the step that overlooked the room, and his eyes widened in genuine appreciation as he turned his head back and forth, taking in all the sights.

"I _like _it," he said.

Draco smiled in spite of himself. So unqualified emotion was a bonus sometimes. He would have to remember that the next time he was tempted to decide there was virtue in only dating pure-bloods.

He turned to look out over the Sapphire Rose, trying to see it as a stranger himself, the way Potter would.

The room was both wide and long, the walls rising up to delicate arched windows decorated in deep blue glass, each of them forming a pattern of thorns, or rose petals, or leaves. Sometimes there was a whole flower, shedding carefully modulated light on one of the round tables that stood here and there about the room. Never too close together, of course. That would ruin the experience of dining in silence and beauty.

The center of the ceiling bore the largest rose, made of what Draco was certain were set sapphires, and the blue light that beamed down there bathed the largest table, made of a hinged sideboard and the much smaller portion where two people would actually sit. Harry laughed a little as Draco led him over to it and seated him at it with both fuss and ceremony.

"Of course you would reserve the largest one," he said, leaning back and smiling at Draco.

Draco paused a second before slipping into the chair that the discreet house-elf popping up beside him had already drawn. That smile was _dazzling, _and he didn't think it was just the blue light that made it so.

"What?" Potter asked, raising his eyebrows.

_That's right, he's probably had enough of staring from his past lovers and those people who call themselves his fans. _Draco shook his head with a smile and slid into his seat, waiting until the house-elf had pushed it the perfect distance forwards to answer. "Nothing. A memory of dining here before, that's all."

Potter grinned at him, took a glance at the menu that had appeared—letters floating down the beam of blue light to hover in front of them—and leaned back in his chair, lounging and graceful. "Really? Who were you with?"

Draco blinked at him. "You want to hear about someone I dated before you? Why?"

* * *

Harry lost his smile, not because Malfoy had really done something that unexpected, but—

_All right, so that's completely the reason._

He hadn't thought Malfoy would ask that question, would be so _direct. _He had given Malfoy the chance for mind-games, for cryptic remarks that would compare Harry to his past lovers and to brag about his own skill, because that was surely one of the reasons Malfoy had taken him on this date. Competition with other people, but also with Harry and his own past self.

_Maybe I was wrong. _

When he realized that Malfoy was waiting for an answer, though, Harry shook his head a little. No, he might have been wrong about Malfoy's methods, but not about his motive. He still wasn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart or any genuine attraction.

"Because I wonder what you look for in a dining partner, not a date," Harry said. "It surely can't be a Gryffindor nature."

"What if I said it was green eyes?" Malfoy murmured, leaning nearer and pitching his voice low.

Harry didn't scowl, but only because he had somewhat expected the answer. As Frank said, his _eyes _were attractive.

He leaned back and picked up the small crystal glass of water that had already risen out of the smooth surface of the sideboard. "Then I'll say that you have a wide field to choose from, and I only hope I don't disappoint you," he remarked, swallowing a little of the water.

Malfoy frowned. Apparently that had been the wrong answer, but since Harry had no idea what the right one would have been, he did nothing but smile. Malfoy half-shook his head and asked, "How many green-eyed wizards of an acceptable age and power level do you think there are?"

"More than you give yourself credit for," Harry said, and smiled winsomely at Malfoy. "Of course, if you want to date only in Britain, that _does _cut down your field. I can give you the Floo address of an old lover of mine, though. He only moved to Germany. Not that far away by International Portkey."

Malfoy sat up very stiffly, as though his chair had poked him in the back. "You want to pawn me off on an old lover?" he hissed.

_And now what? _Harry hadn't said anything disparaging about Malfoy, more implied something disparaging about himself. He'd thought Malfoy would like that.

Well, maybe Malfoy had taken it as an insult to his taste. Harry shook his head. "Of course not. I was just saying that green eyes aren't as rare as you seem to think." He glanced over the letters swirling in the blue beam of light. "And I think I'm going to have that chicken in cream and the salad with fresh spinach."

Malfoy pressed a hand against his chest. "You don't fill up on treacle tart and cheese the way you always did at Hogwarts? And I see your table manners are better than I would have imagined by associating with Weasley."

Harry blinked once. _So the past is fair game. Okay. _"Of course not," he said evenly. "Tastes change. I'm sure that you receive real post now, for example, instead of the boxes of sweets that your mother used to send all the time."

Malfoy leaned nearer, and Harry assumed someone watching from a distance would see this as an intimate, lover-like conversation. _Hardly_, Harry thought, as he heard Malfoy hiss again. "Don't you insult my mother."

"Then don't insult my friends," Harry snapped back, and stood up, drawing his wand to Summon his cloak from near the door. He should have known better than to think this would work. Malfoy was politer and more polished, but still Malfoy, under the surface. "Good-bye, Malfoy. Go find someone else with green eyes to fuck. I assure you they're better in bed."

And that would have been that, except Malfoy reached out and caught his wrist. Harry turned back and stared at him, already reaching down to remove the hand. _He doesn't even see the favor I'm trying to do him, by preventing him from spending the night with someone incompetent._

* * *

Draco had no idea what was going on. Potter had shocked him, surprised him, and made him recoil so far, and none of it had been on topics that Draco could have anticipated, save perhaps that Potter had insulted his family.

_But I started that one. I should have known better than to make a crack about Weasley. _Draco had seen how close Weasley's desk was positioned to Potter's in the Auror Division, and no rumors had spoken of a wedge driven between them, vicious gossip circulating about Potter or not.

"I'm sorry, Potter," Draco said, speaking as soothingly as he could, and saying the first thing that came into his head, much as he had all night. His father would be ashamed of him. "I didn't mean that just your eyes are attractive."

Potter turned to consider him with that wide, calculating green gaze. Then he nodded shortly and sat down again from Draco.

"Apology accepted. Although if you didn't want to date me for my eyes, I'm at somewhat of a loss," he said, and sipped at his water, never taking his eyes off Draco. "Mind clearing it up?"

Draco cleared his throat and leaned forwards to whisper his order to the beam of blue light that bore the menu. A transparent dodge, but one that Potter, his eyes sparking, allowed, following it with his own order. Draco watched the letters disappear and accepted the glass of wine that rose at his right hand, studying Potter intently. Potter returned the scrutiny, but not as if he needed to figure Draco out, the way Draco was trying to do to him.

"I wanted to see how you'd changed since we were kids," Draco said, telling part of the truth. "And the challenge of seeing if you would agree to go on a date with someone I thought you might still have reasons to despise. I have to admit, I didn't think that you would accept."

Potter smiled. "Yes. You should have seen your face."

Draco waved one hand to dismiss the subject. "Why did you want me to pay for dinner?"

"Because I don't usually eat in wizarding establishments this expensive." Potter continued sipping water. He'd apparently ordered nothing else to drink. Draco wavered between being insulted by that and gratified that it meant his bill would be smaller than otherwise. "This represents a rare opportunity for me."

"You could eat at one any time you wanted," Draco said, and smiled at Potter, seeking to regain control of the conversation. "Unless those rumors about you losing all your money in Quidditch wagers _are _true."

"Not Quidditch wagers," Potter said, shaking his head a little. "Private lessons and potions that I needed."

Draco blinked at him, but Potter didn't give him the chance to inquire if that was the truth, continuing, "Besides, it's no fun to eat a meal alone, and that's what I should have done in the last year, bar the rare times Ron and Hermione could join me."

"Your friends are that busy?" Draco tried hard to keep his voice to a neutral tone, but he didn't know if he succeeded. He almost never _would _succeed, he reflected, with Weasley.

"Yes," Potter said, and gave Draco a smile that was almost tender, although Draco was sure that it was tender on his friends' account, and not Draco's. "They have their own lives now, and Hermione in particular is busy. Do you know that she successfully argued that werewolves created by other werewolves—like Fenrir Greyback—for revenge shouldn't have to register with the Ministry? As long as they take Wolfsbane, they're safe, and they're law-abiding members of wizarding society, unlike the werewolves that created them. It's unfair to punish people who are victims more than the werewolves who are outlaws, and who the Ministry can't force to register anyway, because no one can catch them—"

"Yes, yes," Draco cut him off quickly. He liked the way the light came back into Potter's eyes and his face opened up when he was talking about his friends, but he also couldn't listen to details of Granger's exploits forever. He was more interested in talking about _Potter_. "But what about you? Don't you ever have things to do that would prevent you from eating with your friends?"

Potter peered at him as if he was some strange new species of snail. "Yes. Otherwise I would meet with them more often." He spoke slowly, and then gave Draco a more natural smile. "And of course, tonight, there's this date with you."

Draco nodded sharply and leaned back a little as the sideboard opened up and their meals rose, fresh and steaming, from the underground kitchen. They had been talking about half an hour, and he hadn't accomplished anything so far except to nearly send Potter away and learn a little about Potter's friends and finances. He didn't seem to be anywhere near to the _core _of Potter, the man he would have expected to emerge on dates. Even if Draco didn't care that much about romance and permanent commitments—and he had learned to rate them a little better in the last few years—he would have expected Potter to.

Potter was eating, instead, with every sign of enjoyment of the delicate food, and every sign that he would be happy to leave the conversation lying in the middle of the table where they'd left it. Draco eyed him and wondered what was going through his head.

* * *

_What did Malfoy expect? A full confessional?_

Malfoy was puzzling Harry more and more as the evening went on. First he seemed polite, then he was insulting, then he acted as though he wanted to hear something about Harry's life, and then he kept silent after their food arrived. Of course, at that point, it might simply be that his mouth was full.

But if he wanted sex, Harry could give him that. Harry leaned back, his stomach comfortably full of chicken and spinach, and wondered what Malfoy would do if he simply asked him about that outright.

So he decided to find out.

"This restaurant is nice," he said, smiling at Malfoy. Malfoy looked as instantly wary at the smile as he had looked when Harry was planning a prank on him. Harry nodded to himself. _This can't work as the kind of relationship Hermione was hoping I could have, but it'll work on my terms. _"And I was thinking of having dessert, since you're paying. But we can leave a bit early, and have a different kind of dessert. _My _treat." He let his voice lower, his hand stray out to play with Malfoy's fingers.

Malfoy jerked his hand back as if a live spider had attacked him. He was staring at Harry, and his mouth was open. Harry inclined his head, letting his smile remain, and took his hand back. It was up to Malfoy to accept or refuse the invitation.

"You," Malfoy said, trailing off as if a new thought had occurred to him. He ended by saying, "The rumors that said you were a slut were right."

It wasn't that much effort for Harry to preserve his smile; Muggles had called him worse things when they were coming in his mouth. "That's right," he agreed. "And you can experience it for yourself, if you like."

"They also said that you weren't much good at sex." Malfoy continued speaking as though he had no idea what he would say next, as if he was confessing aloud to his enchanted mirror, never taking his eyes from Harry.

"Well, I can give you a _taste _of the one thing I'm good at," Harry said, and licked his lips fully before taking another swallow of water.

Malfoy shut his eyes. Then he opened them and said, "Something isn't right here."

Harry laughed aloud, again drawing a few glances from the nearby tables, although they turned away soon enough. He didn't know who was looking at them, and he didn't care. The news that Harry Potter was dating Draco Malfoy would be all over the Ministry by tomorrow, but it might already be there; Malfoy hadn't been subtle about the way he approached Harry in the middle of the Auror Department. "Of course it isn't," he said. "It wasn't from the first moment you approached me, and I don't think we've got along well here. But I am offering you sex. Think of it as payment for the dinner and the insults I forced you to endure, if you want."

Malfoy reached out and picked up his glass of wine with a hand that shook. Harry leaned back and waited for him to make up his mind, touching and tapping his water all the while, to listen to the music on the glass.

* * *

_He can't be offering what I think he's offering._

But it seemed Potter—from the bright determination in his eyes to the way that his slender hands lay on the table—was. And that he had no embarrassment about it, no shame, and no desire to cloak what he was saying in something else.

_I called him a slut._

Potter's lip curled as though he could sense every thought that paraded through Draco's head and considered most of them ridiculous. He shrugged and said, "It's up to you whether you accept it, of course. I would never want to force someone into something distasteful to them. Not now," he added, his face darkening, "when I found out that I did it more than once without meaning to."

Draco's head was spinning faster than the wine could have accounted for. "Explain what you mean by that," he snapped.

"I found out that several of my previous lovers were deceived in me, that I wasn't what they thought I was, and it disappointed and hurt them," Potter said evenly. "I would have done something to stop it if I knew that when we began dating, but I didn't. Their confessions were forced out of them later, long after the point when I should have known something was wrong and stopped." His eyes fluttered briefly closed, then opened again. "So. It's absolutely and utterly up to you. Anyone who gets involved with me now _knows _what I look like, minus Muggles that I have to conceal some of the more magical scars from."

Draco stirred his finger through his wine, then realized how vulgar he was being and put the glass down hastily. The only thing he could think of was a question that had rung in the back of his mind ever since he'd spoken with Tobley. "Do you really have a scar from a Blood Quill on the back of your hand?"

Potter gave him a smile that had a dark light behind it, and pushed his right sleeve back, revealing his hand.

Yes, there were the words. Draco stared at them. They were even in Potter's sloppy writing, which he'd seen often enough when glaring at Potter in class. _I must not tell lies. _Somehow Draco had thought he would notice them right away.

"What other scars do you have?" he asked.

Potter lifted his eyebrows. "Then you're accepting my offer?"

"I—don't know yet." Draco reached into his purse and put some Galleons down on the table with a shaking hand. "But I know that I don't want to discuss this inside anymore." It wasn't the sort of conversation appropriate for the Sapphire Rose, and if he seemed too shaken or interested, there was the chance that someone would start to use eavesdropping charms.

"Fair enough," Potter said, in a tone so calm and deep that Draco would have thought it was a lie, but he stood up, then walked around the table and drew out Draco's chair as though he was the one who had invited Draco on this date, and was personally responsible for courtesy towards him.

Draco rose, feeling as though a spring was uncoiling inside him. He was shaking, quivering, and he couldn't even name the emotions that turned steadily back and forth in his head, only the impulses: to punch Potter, to Apparate away, to apologize and scurry off.

To kiss Potter.

"Come on, then," Potter said, extending a hand. "It's only fair that you have a look at how scarred I am. I never showed most other people that until we'd been dating a while, and it made them recoil. God knows that we're hardly friends, but I don't want to do that to anyone again. Your place or mine?"

* * *

Harry had once thought he would never willingly set foot in Malfoy Manor again, but then, he had once thought he would never willingly date anyone but Ginny. Things changed.

They had Flooed in after all, rather than Apparated, and this room was a rather nice one, Harry thought, looking around critically, whose principal colors seemed to be blue and white. The bookshelves glowed a subtle version of the first, but the carpet was a deep-piled version of the latter, almost as blue as the sapphire roses in the restaurant they had left behind. The chairs were white with traceries of blue on the cushions and arms, and the fireplace that dominated the room, which they'd come out of, was flanked with blue winged lions. Harry wondered what the significance was, but it was probably something private to the Malfoys.

He turned to face Malfoy, who had stumbled in first and was standing in front of Harry now, staring at him as if he was drunk. Malfoy swallowed and said, with the sort of desperate courage that Harry had seen in a few of the Muggles who'd propositioned him in clubs—usually men who were having their first time with another man—"Let's see what's on offer, then."

Harry nodded, half-smiling. He was glad that Malfoy's bravery had come this far, and he could oblige without ever taking off his clothes, which would promise some kind of sex that he would be spectacularly bad at and upset people with. He turned his back to Malfoy, so that Malfoy would start off staring at his arse, and cast the charm that turned his clothes transparent.

He heard Malfoy breathing hoarsely behind him, which wasn't unexpected. Harry knew what he would be seeing without a mirror, of course. The harsh white scars that curved around his ribs, legacy of a conjured bear with huge claws that Harry had faced in his first month of proper work as an Auror; a few of the long-ago markings from beatings by Dudley; the scar that began on the side of his throat and continued around.

And a skinny back and untalented arse and pale skin that never seemed to turn a healthy color no matter how Harry was out in the sun, of course. But Harry had given up on thinking about those a long time ago. As long as he wasn't tormenting people with them, only showing them to someone who'd _asked, _it didn't matter.

When he thought Malfoy had looked long enough, he turned slowly to the side. Now Malfoy could see how the scar continued across his throat, and the mark on his arm from the basilisk's fangs. And probably how Harry's arms flowed into stupid elbows and knobby wrists, of course. But Harry didn't know exactly how the evening would end, and he had vowed to put off trying to anticipate someone else's reactions. So he stood there, and breathed softly and lightly, and turned to face Malfoy only when Malfoy made a small choked sound.

Now he would see, more fully, the scar from the Blood Quill, and the ending, messy brand on Harry's throat, and the burn on his chest from the locket Horcrux, and the half-completed Dark Mark that one of Harry's enemies had thought it would be fun to carve into him after he'd tied him down last year. That had only lasted until Ron burst into the cavern and disrupted the magical circle by kicking apart the ashes that their enemy had used to form it, but the knife he'd been using was an athame, and the Healers had told Harry that to reduce the Mark to a mere outline was the best they could do.

Harry's skin still stretched tight over his ribs. At that, it was an improvement from what he had looked like when he was still dating Frank, before he began taking the nutritional potions the Healers had recommended.

Harry looked up from the consideration of his own body to Malfoy. Malfoy was pale, and Harry sighed a little. Being faced with these reminders of the war when he had his own was probably too much for him. Harry waved his wand, and his clothes snapped back into opacity again. He glanced at the Floo, and wondered if it was too late for him to retreat gracefully out of it.

"Do you want me to go?" he asked quietly. "I understand if you do."

* * *

Draco shook his head. It was the only, it was the _instinctive, _response to a question like Potter's, but he didn't have the words to follow it for long moments.

He had never thought that Potter would look like that, so scathed from his meetings with the world and the Dark Lord and the other dangers that he'd faced. Draco had once been lucky enough to get hold of a basilisk fang when he'd done a favor for a friend of his mother's, and he recognized the scar it would leave if it pierced something. Draco was just _lucky _it hadn't been his skin, or he knew he would carry the identical scar.

But he didn't find Potter ugly, not the way Tobley had told him he would. He found Potter a survivor, and intriguing to look at, and _interesting. _Tough in the way a survivor was meant to be. Maybe a little pale, maybe a little skinny. But not repulsive.

He looked back at Potter's eyes, and saw Potter half-frowning at him. "Why don't you want me to go?" Potter asked. "You look—well, as though the past has come back to haunt you."

_The war, _Draco decided after a confused moment of trying to think of what Potter could be referring to. _He means the war. _

"No," Draco said, and moved forwards. He wondered what he was going to do next, what Potter was going to do next. For all he knew, Potter would turn around and sweep towards the Floo, and Draco wouldn't have the strength to stop him.

But instead, Potter stooped down and met him kiss for kiss. Draco discovered his mouth was open for the kiss and his hands greedily reaching after all.

But where he had wanted to kiss Potter's mouth, Potter kissed his cheek, _licked _his cheek, and whispered into his ear, "Do you want the dessert I offered you in the restaurant?" His voice was deep and husky.

Draco swallowed. He didn't know what he had wanted, he thought. That was still true. He might want something Potter couldn't give him, something that Potter was incapable of giving anyone, if the stories that Tobley had told about him were true.

But on the other hand, hadn't he already decided not to believe her? He had decided that when he looked at Potter and didn't flinch away.

He found himself nodding.

Potter pulled back and considered him in silence for a moment. Then he smiled.

"This might work," he murmured, pulling back and dropping to his knees as he reached out with graceful hands to tug down Draco's trousers. "It might even work more than once."

Draco stared down at Potter, and said nothing, because there was nothing to say. Potter, the emblem of Gryffindor trust and faithfulness, had decided to abandon Draco after one night, and go back to working in the Ministry beside him as if nothing had happened? That _did _stun Draco. There was nothing in either what he knew of Potter before now or what the rumors had said to substantiate it.

But Potter was continuing. "It's not as though either of us is in love," he said, and slipped Draco's trousers down deftly. He smiled at Draco's legs, running his hand over the pale skin and startling shivers to life that Draco hadn't known he could feel. "Not you with me, not me with you. But you're attractive, and you haven't run screaming from me, and you're braver than I knew, approaching me like this." He tilted his head back, his weight resting more firmly on his knees, and Draco found himself glad that the carpet was as thick as it was. "So. Maybe you'd be more interested in this than I thought? More than once?"

Draco could only nod. He wasn't sure what else he ought to do, but he _did _know that he wanted to see Potter again, if only to talk about the absurd thoughts racing through Draco's head and the tension coiled in his middle.

"Good."

Potter smiled, and there was such _light _in his eyes. Draco wanted to reach out and touch the beams that came from them, the delicacy and the beauty of them. But he found his hands remaining at his sides as Potter lowered his pants, too, and sighed at the sight of Draco's bobbing cock. Draco stared down, overwhelmed and shocked and not sure when he had got hard.

"This _is _all right with you?" Potter asked, looking at Draco a moment later so strongly that Draco wasn't sure this was the same man who had stared at his erection after all. "You don't want me to stop and walk away? Because I can, you know. I'd much rather do that than hurt you."

_He's so strange. What is he talking about? _Draco's head might be a little unclear, but he knew what he wanted. He reached out and grasped the back of Potter's neck, guiding him towards his groin, while at the same time he muttered, "Yes. Yes, I want you to continue."

He was proud of himself for managing a big word like "continue," and Potter grinned at him as if he was proud of Draco, too, before opening his mouth and taking Draco with gentleness onto his tongue.

Draco shut his eyes and sagged back against the wall. Potter's hands on his hips held him up even more than that, fingers running over his skin, nails not digging in but caressing. Draco gasped and panted through the initial warmth, and then Potter began to suck in earnest, and Draco forgot his world.

* * *

_He's enjoying it._

This was the one thing Harry knew he was good at, the one thing he had practiced and practiced and practiced, because it was simple and that meant even someone like him could learn it, and because it was easy to see results on the Muggles who were his practice. Still, he felt relaxation flood him to know that he was pleasing another wizard lover.

Maybe he could have been doing this all along, during the last year. Take someone who didn't care that much about him personally, who was even hostile to him, and give them the pleasure of his mouth. He had tried to get too involved last time, but this was simple, this was holding back and giving at the same time.

This was a way of making them _both _feel good.

Malfoy was beautiful, with the high color in his cheeks and the way his hands groped and fluttered about in the air, apparently thinking that Harry was much taller than he was when he was kneeling down. Finally, one found his neck and one his hair, and they both kneaded and turned back and forth, while his hips jerked in Harry's hold and his cock jerked in Harry's mouth. He was warm, too, blazingly warm as the light in the Sapphire Rose, and he tasted very good.

Harry stroked his tongue up and down, closing his eyes so he could concentrate on scent and taste. Both were sharp, as though they had invaded his mind and space. But no, that was wrong, he had invited them here, and he was tasting someone he knew. Harry smiled and let more and more of Malfoy into him, down his throat, and rubbed his hips as Malfoy groaned like he was going to slump to the floor.

He had to lean forwards and brace his shoulders against Malfoy's legs as they shook, to keep him from falling. But he didn't care. What mattered was that it was _Malfoy's _angles against him, and Malfoy's pale skin, and Malfoy's scent curling into his nostrils as persistent as the points to Malfoy's cheekbones, and he wanted to laugh for the thrill of it.

Harry licked and lapped and leaned back, letting Malfoy simply sit on his tongue for a second, while Harry teased him with fast dashes of his tongue, learning what he liked, what would make him pant and what would make him groan. Then he leaned back in, and sucked so hard that Malfoy's hips rose off the wall and fully into his hands. Harry hummed and took a deep breath through his nose, then began to suck without breathing at all.

It was something he couldn't do often, mostly when he liked the person he was sucking rather than just thinking of them as a night's entertainment. Malfoy trembled worse than ever, and then his muscles locked and his noises paused in the way that was so familiar to Harry. Harry shut his eyes firmly and imagined his throat opening, flooding, filling—

It came, and Malfoy came. Harry swallowed quickly, but in measured gulps. He was overwhelmed, not by the amount, but because the sharp smell increased, and the stickiness in his throat, and the way Malfoy curled over him and fumbled out with one hand for his wand, something a Muggle would never do.

Neither did he immediately push Harry away, the way Frank had before Harry became aware of his deficiencies and could correct them. Harry leaned back on his heels and gently manipulated Malfoy to the side, casting a Cushioning Charm on the carpet so Malfoy wouldn't bump his head.

Malfoy looked up at him from the floor, panting in a daze of completion. Harry grinned and swallowed once more before he kissed Malfoy's throat. He wasn't confident enough to try a brushing of lips, which would probably be as wet and ungraceful as he'd always been, but most men had sensitive necks, and he couldn't go _too _wrong. From the way Malfoy turned his head towards Harry, he liked it.

"Thank you," Harry whispered. "You were really _you_. And really responsive," he added, because he wanted to say it. He found a bit of wetness that Malfoy's cleaning charm had missed and swiped it off with a finger. "Do you want me to call a house-elf to take you to bed?"

Malfoy just lay there, breathing hard. Maybe he was too worn-out to say much for a second, Harry thought. Well. He supposed that was a compliment. He sat down, gently stroking his own erection, certain Malfoy wouldn't mind because he was lying there with his eyes closed now and wouldn't know.

* * *

_Shit. _

That had been one of the most _thorough _experiences of Draco's life. Potter seemed to take the time to learn what he liked impossibly well, given that this was the first time he and Draco had ever been together. He teased, yes, but then he fulfilled the teasing, and he knew what would tread the edge of painful and what would go over. He knew what made Draco nearly helpless, his toes curling into the carpet. It had even been hot the way he had left Draco's shirt on and that had continually brushed against Draco's hands when he was trying to feel for the way to hold himself up.

And now Potter sat back and asked questions that frankly weren't very important right now, because the rushing and roaring in Draco's ears made it hard for him to listen. Draco lay there just trying to get his breath back.

By the time he did, and opened his eyes, Potter was sitting beside him, smiling a little down at him. The smile was weird, Draco thought. It had lust in it, sure, but also gentleness, and what he could have sworn was _nostalgia, _as though Potter was reliving the experience in his head and liking it.

Draco slowly lifted himself up on one elbow, intent on saying a lot, especially about some of the things Potter had said before he started sucking Draco, or about the scars Potter had showed him. But he paused when he saw Potter was still hard.

"I didn't know," he said, and gestured to Potter's groin. He felt steadier than he had since before Potter had offered to take him back home and suck him. He could say this, and Potter would understand what he was talking about and not be offended.

"Hmmm?" Potter blinked at him. "What do you mean? You didn't know what it would be like to have sex with me?" He grinned. "But how should you? It's not like either of us ever thought about it before."

Draco just shook his head, not wanting to get into that right now. "I didn't realize you hadn't come," he whispered, and reached for Potter. "Let me take care of that."

Potter's hand moved, catching Draco's wrist, and holding it away. Draco blinked, then refocused on Potter. He would have said something about how Potter _still _didn't think Draco was good enough to touch him, but that wasn't true. He'd let Draco hold onto his hair while he was sucking him, that was all.

"No," Potter said, softly, definitely.

Draco stared at him. "I don't know what you mean," he finally muttered, because he didn't. This was probably the most baffling thing Potter had done all evening.

Potter sighed. "Look. Some of the rumors you heard were the truth. I'm _really _not good at most parts of sex. That's why I didn't let you kiss me earlier. It would have tasted horrible and been sloppy and snapped you out of the mood completely. And I really wanted to taste you." He smiled again at Draco, the way he had a minute ago. "And it was _great_."

"Look, Potter," Draco said, taking a moment to be glad that his parents were on extended holiday at the moment and not around to hear him speaking as though this made sense. "How good you are at sex or not has nothing to do with the way _I _touch _you_. You can let me wank you without succumbing to some horrible sexual disease, I promise."

Potter continued looking at him as if he made no sense. "No," he said, finally, when the force of his stare had failed to get the message across to Draco. "It's—I don't respond the right way, okay? To _anything_. I wouldn't thrust the way I should, or last as long as I should."

Draco just continued staring at him. This was probably the most bizarre conversation he'd ever had. It had seemed comic when Tobley had told him that Potter would come prematurely, but for Potter to have accepted it so thoroughly, to talk about it with even less reluctance than Tobley had…

"Look," Potter said, softly, soothingly, with an expression of deep _understanding _on his face that chilled Draco in ways he wasn't used to. "It's okay. If you can accept it, I'd really like to see you again. We can have passable conversations as long as we stay away from the past, and it's not like you have any illusions about me now, and you still haven't run screaming the other way."

_Like the others did, _Draco thought, his heartbeat slow with shock. _Like the way Potter thinks I would at a moment's notice._

"And it's nice to not have to pretend with someone, to be honest from the beginning," Potter said, his voice growing quicker, his eyes brighter. "This way, you'll at least get a couple of brilliant blowjobs out of it. And if you get tired of me and don't want to see me again, no harm done." He shrugged and smiled at Draco. "Neither of us cares that much, right? Neither of us has a relationship that this interrupted."

Draco shook his head. He didn't know whether he was agreeing or disagreeing. He didn't know if any statement he made was capable of climbing the walls Potter had erected around himself.

_He didn't just think that what Tobley—and probably the others—said about his being bad in bed was true. He took it into his head and fucking _internalized _it._

"You can stop any time," Potter said. "Like I said, I'd really like to see you again, but I'll leave right now and never come back, if you want."

Draco's tongue was all tangled up beneath his teeth. Finally, though, he managed to blurt out, "Why does that matter to you so much?"

Potter relaxed at the question, bloody _relaxed, _and looked at him with his face shining like starlight. "Because I physically hurt and disgusted a lot of people, and I never knew it," he responded. "You should be absolutely free and know everything from the beginning, so that you know what you're getting, and what you're not. Not someone who's whole, or emotionally stable, or someone who can kiss you or wank you or fuck you acceptably. Or someone who would respond the right way if you wanted to do the same things to him," he added, as if that had occurred to him late. "But someone who's good with his mouth, and casual, and someone you can probably talk to more honestly than anyone else. I won't tell any of your secrets that you don't want me to, promise, but I don't have many of my own."

Draco just stared. The corners of his eyes felt tight, and so did his throat. He had to swallow a few times so that his words would come out comprehensibly. "What if I—what if I _wanted _to do those things to you?"

"Touch me?" Potter arched his eyebrows, then sighed. "You don't have any idea what a horrible experience it would be. Trust me, I'm protecting you."

Draco just shook his head. The tightness at the corners of his eyes increased, and he wanted to do something, to say something, to touch Potter in just the right way that would make his walls fall and make him reveal what had to be the truth. Because this couldn't be, not this—this conviction of ugliness. Draco had met some people who protested that they were ugly or evil or bad at sex, but they didn't really believe it; they wanted to be reassured by hearing someone else compliment them.

Potter believed it, and there was a touch of what was nearly pity in his eyes as he regarded Draco.

"Like I said," Potter finished quietly, "if you aren't comfortable with that, tell me. I want to see you again, but that doesn't mean you want to see me."

Draco caught his tongue and his head, both, before it could shake. He knew how Potter would take it if Draco shook his head right now.

"No," Draco said, strongly, aloud. "I want to see you again. I think I can bear the terms." He studied Potter. "But I don't always want to pay for dinner."

Potter laughed. Draco watched him hungrily under the cover of the moment, blanking his face when Potter looked at him again.

Draco wanted to know what the hell was going on, what had happened, what kind of strangeness lay behind the attitude Potter had formed. And he _would _learn, he knew now. He would make sure that he learned. He would stay close to Potter and put up with terms that were distasteful to him—or, well, not distasteful, because the blowjob really had been brilliant, but not as close as he wanted—for a time.

In the end, he would achieve what the others hadn't. He would learn the real Potter, and he would make sure that he had a chance to speak to him, challenge him, maybe make him shed those strange things he believed about himself.

Because no one could go on believing those things. Not really. They would go mad.

Draco had to learn what was behind them.

"Thanks," Potter said, grinning at him. "It means a lot. Let me know when you want to go on another date." He stood up and brushed some dust off himself, and Draco realized then, fully, for the first time, the truth hitting him like a blow, that Potter had never taken off his clothes.

"But why don't you make the date the next time?" Draco asked, before Potter could Floo out.

"Because that might not be the time you wanted, and I'm terrible at figuring out what other people want," Potter said quietly, glancing at him over his shoulder.

Draco didn't know what to say, so he just nodded, and watched Potter vanish in a rush of green flame.

* * *

Harry had barely reached home when he sagged against the wall and grabbed himself, wanking in three sharp jerks until he exploded over the inside of his pants.

He leaned there, letting himself spiral down through pleasure until he reached what was waiting for him at the bottom. But not loneliness, this time, or getting out of a Muggle club and back home.

He had someone who _wanted _to see him again. Someone who acted as though Harry was tolerable company, and tasted great, and knew he was a wizard.

Harry opened his eyes and grinned.

He was happier than he'd been in a long time.


	4. Compassion

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—Compassion_

"You didn't tell me you were going to do _that_."

Draco glanced up, his mind whirling with numbers and procedures that he would need to bring to bear on the latest potion the Ministry had asked him to supervise. Yes, Draco knew many Potions masters nowadays made at least a few vials of Wolfsbane every month, but most people wouldn't be asked to take responsibility for a batch of _seven hundred._

The sight of Daphne lingering and pouting in the doorway was so different from what he was thinking about that he had to pause and physically rub his temple before he could focus on her. And then what she said made no more sense, and he shook his head and said, "What?"

"I told you that I was trying to figure out the _real _information about Potter's dating life so I could sell the story." Daphne slinked into the room and flung herself down in the chair before his desk, folding her hands under her chin so she could blink up at him. Draco knew that look of old, and he narrowed his eyes before he could stop himself. Daphne either didn't notice or saw no reason to let that interrupt her rant. "And then you go and insinuate yourself into his bed before I can do anything. It's not fair, Draco."

Draco rubbed his temple for a different reason this time, pushed the details on the Wolfsbane back across his desk, and took the seat across from her. "I didn't know that I was going to ask Potter out when I talked to you. I only had the idea afterwards."

After talking to Tobley. After seeing, or thinking he'd seen, the immense mess Potter had ended up in.

Now, after his date and night with Potter, Draco knew the mess was co-extensive with Potter's soul. He didn't know how to handle it yet, when he would see Potter again, what he would say to convince him that he could do more than blow Draco once in a while and be grateful for it. That was another reason Draco'd flung himself so eagerly into his work today; it was something else to think about.

"Still, it wasn't fair. It was stealing my story and my broom money." Daphne leaned forwards. "I know a way you can make it up to me, Draco."

Draco flapped his hand. "Of course I'll take you to dinner at the Sapphire Rose. Or wherever else you like," he added quickly.

Then he told himself to stop being stupid. As far as he knew, Daphne had no dislike for the food at the Sapphire Rose, and it was cheaper than a few of the other places she might choose.

The revulsion he felt at the thought of being there with someone other than Potter was silly. Besides, he didn't know that he was ever going to date Potter, and would he shut himself out of one of his favorite restaurants for the rest of his life because of some silly sentiment?

_Of course not._

Daphne ducked her head, and Draco stiffened a little. That was the way she acted when she was going to totally ignore some offer he'd made and take off on her own. Except this time, he couldn't fathom what she could do that would affect the situation in any way.

He found out when she looked up at him, shook her head, and said, "No, tempting as that is. I want the details."

"Excuse me?" Draco was proud of himself for keeping his voice so bland, given the rapid heartbeat that had started to rock his limbs and the clammy sweat gathering at his temples.

"The details. The _gossip_." Daphne leaned towards him, still backwards on the chair, so that it tilted under her and she had to spend a moment righting its legs. Draco used that moment to wipe out every trace of any emotion but polite interest from his face. "I know you left the Sapphire Rose early. You went back to the Manor, didn't you?"

Draco shrugged with one shoulder, to tell Daphne she could believe whatever she liked.

Daphne licked her lips. "What was it like? What's _he _like? As bad as those rumors said? Or did he make that vow that he would never date another wizard, and _keep _it?" She closed one eye in a slow wink. "Of course, there are lots of things you can do to someone without dating them, don't you agree?"

Draco sat there, and there was no reason for his hands to want to knot and his legs to want to carry him out of the office.

No reason, and so after a moment, he was able to sigh and say, "You think I would give you such privileged information because you think I cost you money? Money from a story that you might or might not have been able to unearth or sell?" Draco rolled his eyes. "Find some price more worth the goods, Daphne."

Daphne sat up and stared at him. Then she said, "You've never not gossiped about someone else, Draco."

"Pansy," Draco reminded her.

"That's different." Daphne tossed back a lock of her hair. "Pansy's Slytherin. I know what she would do to someone who gossiped about her. But Potter's not one of us. He's always been as different as he could be. I want to _know_. What loyalty can you possibly have to him? Why won't you tell me?"

Her voice had become a slight whine by the last words, always one of her least attractive qualities. Draco restrained the snarl he wanted to utter. No, there was no reason for him to be so sensitive, and therefore no reason to expose the weakness. Daphne would be on it like a hound after a rabbit.

"Because I don't want to tell you," he said. _Because what's wrong with Potter is my business now, more my business than anyone else's. Because Potter's past lovers did this to him and Potter himself doesn't understand why it's wrong._

Daphne stood up hard enough to send her chair careening into Draco's desk, and stood looking at Draco with eyes in which the light had settled. Then she said, quietly, "You might choose to change your mind about that later, Draco," and walked out of the office.

Draco closed his eyes. Then he turned back to his Wolfsbane order, because really, some things were more important than Daphne and her insatiable appetite for gossip.

* * *

"I _do _feel sorry for you, Potter."

Harry didn't look up. He'd felt Daphne Greengrass's approach long before she came close enough to say that. He carefully signed the report he was writing, and then leaned back in his chair and smiled at her. "Why do you say that?"

Greengrass paused, as though she had thought Harry would explode at her with eager demands to know what she meant, or else hot denials. She chose to take a seat on the edge of his desk, and cross one leg over the other. Harry just carried on watching her. He knew someone passing by might take this incident and spread rumors about it, but after all the horrible gossip that had circulated in the last year, who cared? Lies always hurt less than truth, and Harry had faced the truth and taught himself not to feel pain from it.

"You ought to know that Malfoy's spreading tales," Greengrass said, and examined her nails.

Harry blinked once. He hadn't thought it of Malfoy, but it was possible. After all, some of his other lovers had. Harry recognized the small hints and twists of memory among the rumors. The problem for them was, there were so many stories about him already that no one paid much attention to any _one _rumor.

"I think I'll go and ask him why," Harry said, and stood up.

Greengrass spun towards him, and then turned it into a smooth slide down from his desk. But she smiled too widely, and murmured, "Is that necessary? You can ask me what he said, and then you wouldn't have to confront someone who obviously doesn't care about you."

"Not many people care about me," Harry said, and saw her blink. It was probably his tone on the words that had confused her, far from the self-pitying one she must have expected. "I don't think the circle's expanded to include you. Or Malfoy, for that matter. But I'm _curious _about a lot more people than care about me, and I want to ask him what he thought he could gain from gossip." He tipped a smile at Greengrass. "Who knows, it might be some arcane and complicated Slytherin motive that I'll never grasp, but in that case, I'm extending my knowledge of humanity in general."

He took a step, and Greengrass grabbed his shoulder. Harry spun smoothly towards her, taking her wrist and flinging her hand up so that it hit the wall. Greengrass recoiled with a pained gasp, staring at him.

"Listen," Harry said softly. "You must not have spent time around a lot of people with Auror training, or you wouldn't have done that. But it gives me very…_sharp_ reflexes. You could get hurt if you persisted."

He held her gaze and gave her the chance to understand that his message referred to far more than the way she had touched him. Greengrass turned a little red, but she shook her head. "I just don't want you to get into a confrontation in the middle of the Ministry," she muttered. "I know that Draco has something pretty important to do today, and he's a friend. I don't want you to distract him. Or cost him his job," she added, obviously warming to the lie. "That might happen, so many people still distrust him."

Harry smiled at her. "And if he's a friend, why betray him by telling me that he's spreading tales in the first place?"

Greengrass clenched her hands in the folds of her robe and drew herself up. "As a decent person—" she began.

Harry drew his wand and flicked it under cover of his sleeve. Greengrass doubled up, her arms wrapped around her stomach, gasping from the nonverbal pain curse that Harry had mastered when he had a few persistent suitors who wouldn't take "no" for an answer. It wasn't anything like the Cruciatus, but it was a few intense seconds of _concentrated _pain, in the gut area, which was one of the worst.

Harry waited until five heartbeats had passed, removed the spell, and stepped up to Greengrass, speaking softly into her ear. Let someone else take that as intimate if they wanted. Harry was going to Malfoy right after this and explaining the situation, and Malfoy was the only one who might have a right to be disturbed by the scene.

"Let me explain something to you," Harry whispered. "I don't take _shit _like this anymore. I don't believe anyone who comes up and claims they have a horrible secret to tell me about a friend or a lover, because my enemies have tried it _so fucking often. _So now, when someone tells me that, I go to immediately confront the person who supposedly has the horrible secret. If they do, then I can just as immediately end the relationship with that person. But it's never true, and then I know who's the main cause of that tale."

He leaned his wand up against Greengrass's throat, and watched her eyes widen desperately. "If you're afraid of what Malfoy might do to you for this, then be doubly afraid of what I will. If it turns out that it's not true. Which I know it won't be." He paused thoughtfully. "Maybe I ought to do something about you now, just as preemptive insurance…"

Greengrass backed away, staring at him, her hands out to the side as though to hold on to the walls for support. And then she turned and ran.

Harry snorted and strolled away towards the Potions Division. He felt a small regret that that wasn't the direction Greengrass had run in, because it would have terrified her to see him walking calmly after her. But he had more than enough to make up for it, given who he would see soon.

* * *

"Oi!"

Draco would have jumped, but he hadn't been so involved in his paperwork as to miss the footsteps walking up the corridor. He turned around and considered Potter, who leaned on his doorframe with crossed arms and ruffled hair that pointed up and away from his scar. He looked absolutely ridiculous, but Draco felt less inclined to laugh at him now, considering what he had found out.

"Yes, Potter?" he asked. "Is there something I can do for you?"

Potter stepped into his office, shut the door, and grinned at him. "Several things, but one main one," he said. "Greengrass came and told me that you were spreading stories about our date. That true?"

Draco put up a hand to feel at his throat and the invisible block of ice that seemed to be sitting in it. "Really?" he croaked.

_Daphne. You're going to pay for this._

"Did you?" Potter's eyes had far more lights in them than Draco had realized before, and far more shadows.

Draco could think of similar situations where he would have dodged and exclaimed, because speaking straightforwardly was something only weaklings and Gryffindors did. But he knew how that would make Potter react, and so he sat forwards and said, "No. I didn't tell her anything. She's angry because she thought finding out the reason you stopped dating wizards would let her sell the story to the _Prophet, _and so I supposedly cost her money. She was here threatening me this morning."

Potter nodded without appearing surprised. "She came to me and tried to hint that you'd joined in the rumor-spreading competition. But the way she panicked when I said that I'd come and ask you about it was a clue that she was lying." Potter snorted a little and rolled his eyes. "Honestly. I'm a trained Auror. I know that people lie, and how to spot it. I wonder why no one remembers that."

"She must have thought you would be too wounded to approach me, and she could spread what misinformation she liked," Draco said, automatically. "That's the kind of thing she would do."

"And she thinks that all other people's reactions are like hers?" Potter nodded. "I'll keep that in mind if I have to deal with her again. She's one of those who thinks that all minds are like hers only inferior, right? So if she can't anticipate having a different emotion or doing something different, it doesn't exist."

"Right," Draco said, staring at him. He wanted to ask where Potter had learned that, innocent that he was, but then bit his lip and stayed silent. Right, his lovers. Really, as cheerful as Potter acted, it was hard to remember that he'd had an awful past few years sometimes.

"And another thing," Potter went on, looking directly at Draco. "If you ever do want to stop dating me, or not let me suck you again, or whatever you want to call this, then just _tell _me. I promise I won't be hurt. I've been through that before. It always hurts less the ninth time or so than the first." He grinned at Draco.

_And sometimes, _Draco thought, half-scowling, _it's remarkably easy to remember what he said. _He shoved himself back from his desk and stalked around it in Potter's direction. Potter took a step back to open the door.

"What?" Draco asked, stopping. "Don't trust yourself alone in a locked room with me?"

"I thought that if you were about to say something to me that involved never wanting to see me again," Potter said quietly, "you would want an audience. So that way, it'll be harder to distort the story and spread it around."

Draco rubbed his forehead. He might have had a scar like Potter's there, with the amount of time he'd spent doing that in the last day.

"You don't need to protect me," he said.

Potter raised his eyebrows. "Even from Greengrass?"

"You can do whatever you like to her," Draco said firmly. "Just think of yourself as my proxy, instead of my protector."

Potter grinned. "All right."

"But I do want something from you," Draco went on, stepping forwards. "Something that doesn't involve gossip or Daphne or telling when people are lying."

"All right," Potter said, focusing on Draco, although he blinked a few times. "I'm not a good source of rare Potions ingredients, though. And I rather suspect that you have enough Galleons of your own."

Draco hissed under his breath. Anyone _normal _would know what he wanted without making this many mistakes.

But then, Potter wasn't normal, was he? He was fucked in the head, or Draco wouldn't have had to do half this much.

"I want a kiss," he said, and stopped in front of Potter, using his arms to cage Potter against the wall. "A _real _one. On the lips," he added, because he already suspected what dodge Potter would use to get out of this. "One that you make as good as you can, because I don't believe you when you say you can't kiss."

Potter carried on staring at him. "But what motive would I have to lie?" he asked, sounding perplexed. "I might pretend I was good, but why would I _pretend _that I was bad? I was telling you the truth."

"I don't need a protector," Draco said clearly, again. "This time, I want you to kiss me. Or hold still and let me kiss you."

Potter slightly shook his head, but Draco didn't think it was meant as a refusal, so he waited for Potter to speak, although it made his face feel as if he had a fever to do so. "I _am_ trying to keep you from an experience you'll regret. It's horrible, being kissed by me. Everyone who's kissed me's said so." Potter hesitated, then continued in a lower voice. "And if you have to endure that, you might never want to be with me again. And I'd hate that, especially after last night."

Draco wrapped his fingers through Potter's hair, harder and harder, expecting a wince every moment. But perhaps Potter thought that such things didn't hurt next to the "truths" that his lovers had told him in the past, because he just stood there, his eyes wide and earnest and fixed on Draco.

_And so, so wrong._

Draco leaned near enough to kiss Potter, but savagely, didn't let his mouth close the distance. He was going to _make _Potter do this. He was going to break through those barriers, because he didn't choose that any challenge he took on should defeat him. And he was going to insist that Potter join him in this.

The moisture and the warmth grew between their mouths, until Draco felt as if he stood in a jungle. Potter's hair grew loose and wet with the heat under his fingers. And still Potter didn't move, and still Draco held onto his resolve not to do it, although it made all his muscles stiff and his mouth dry with desire.

_Idiot. What's it going to take for him to realize that I'm telling the truth? _

* * *

_Moron. I never saw a Slytherin so determined to destroy himself._

Harry had to hold back so he wouldn't simply shove Malfoy away. He _did _want to spend time with him again. Malfoy was the first wizard to tolerate him sexually in a year. Harry knew he didn't have much to offer, but what he did, he'd given to Malfoy, and Malfoy hadn't disdained it. That made him precious, special, and much more giving than Harry had known he could be.

But Malfoy was also stubborn, and he seemed to be falling victim to the delusion that he was the only one strong enough to endure a kiss from Harry or something. Harry's fingers tightened on the walls, and he made the decision all at once, in a long, strong strike. Malfoy _would _have the kiss he wanted. And then he would either retreat fully, or he would give up enough that Harry could go back to sucking him off and things would be fine.

Harry leaned forwards and kissed Malfoy like a snake, quick as one lunging.

He knew all the deficiencies of his kiss, and he watched Malfoy with open eyes, to see when he would start to notice them. There was the wetness, and the awkwardness of the way Harry held his face, so that his glasses always pressed into the other person's nose, and the way he kept pushing in until he bruised lips and clicked teeth. And it wasn't that he wanted to. It was just that he never knew when to _stop_.

He didn't bother bringing his tongue into play. Malfoy would be convinced enough without that.

Malfoy pulled his head back, staring at Harry. Harry nodded a little. "That was the worst kiss you've ever had, wasn't it?" he asked.

Malfoy said nothing. He moved back, and Harry sighed and turned towards the door. "Send me your decision by owl about whether you want me to come by later," he said over his shoulder. "Or you could meet me at the Leaky Cauldron, and we could go somewhere else for dinner. I'll pay for it this time," he added. It was the only thing he thought he could do to make up for a situation that he had unwillingly precipitated.

Malfoy sat down behind his desk and turned his back. Harry checked another sigh. Malfoy was probably lamenting his own bad judgment, and Harry didn't want to make him feel worse. He slipped out silently.

He walked down the corridor thirty steps, brooding, before he lifted his head, and shook it, and snapped himself out of the senseless emotion. _No_. It was true that he didn't want to lose Malfoy, but that wasn't his decision. Nothing could be, not when he could make someone else feel so bad.

If Malfoy left him, he had Muggles. He had his friends, and his job, and everything else that mattered so much outside the bedroom. He would never force someone to spend time with him again. He could wait for Malfoy's owl, but he couldn't _hope _for it.

Harry went quietly back to his desk, and began to work on the next report, the one he owed the Head Auror from a month back. And if sometimes he felt the pressure of sadness in the back of his mind, he knew techniques to deal with it.

* * *

It _was _the worst kiss Draco had ever experienced.

But that was partially because it was barely a kiss, he thought. Potter had driven his tongue into Draco's closed lips like someone driving a battering ram at a castle, and then pulled it back and used sloppy, wet lips to masticate along his mouth instead. And his glasses had pressed into the side of Draco's nose, and Draco had been uncomfortable and stiff all through it, knowing he wasn't the slightest bit aroused.

Still, he had asked for it, and he couldn't say it was a surprise. Tobley had warned him. Potter had warned him.

Draco blinked as a small snapping noise sounded near him, and looked down. The quill he'd been holding had broken.

Draco cast a non-verbal _Reparo _on it, and shook his head. He couldn't allow himself to get like this; he _couldn't. _No challenge had defeated him in the last few years, from the time he had set himself to become Head of the Potions Division.

He was _going _to change things with Potter. And he was doing it because of the way his throat tightened when he thought about what Potter had told him.

_If no one else took the time to teach him, I will._

Draco did have to lean back, though, shutting the door to his office with a spell, so that he could concentrate on the next thoughts. Did he want to be the one to teach Potter when he knew that serious inconveniences would also attend on that teaching? That he would have to put up with a lot of disappointment and frustration, and Potter might walk away in the end with his walls of denial still intact? Draco might expend a great deal of effort, and still not scale those walls.

_Yes. I want to._

Because the way that Potter had explained about the horrors of his kiss to Draco and tried to "protect" Draco from them bothered Draco. He didn't want that to exist. He didn't want to see it again—although he knew he would if he took up the task of instructing and dating Potter.

_This much I can say, _Draco decided, in the moments before he opened his door and gave himself an order to direct his attention back to the huge supply of Wolfsbane. _My life won't be boring._

* * *

Harry opened his eyes early, blinking muzzily. The night before had passed without an owl from Malfoy, and Harry had eaten with Ron and Hermione instead, teasing Ron about the conclusion of their last case and how he had mistaken a shadow for a spider and cast a curse that ended up ripping down a good portion of the wall of the house they'd come to investigate. That had actually been a _good _thing, because they'd discovered a hoard of stolen rubies behind it, but Ron hadn't known that at the time.

Harry had stayed late, and slept late this morning because it was Saturday. He rolled over now and waved his wand, yawning as he opened the owl-sized pane in the glass that would let the tapping bird in.

He had to work saliva back into his mouth when he saw the seal on the letter, Malfoy's seal without a doubt, although Harry had only seen it a few times before, and years ago. He didn't let his hands shake as they opened it, but that was because he waited until they _stopped _shaking.

_Dear Potter, _

_I know what you must be thinking, but I needed some time to consider before writing to you. If you still want to date me, then come to my house at seven this evening. For what I have in mind, we don't need to be in public._

_Draco Malfoy._

Harry tilted back against his pillows, which could have become silken at that moment, so much pleasure did he take in that simple gesture. The relief made him languid and light-headed, and he flipped himself over to write an immediate acceptance to Malfoy, ignoring the way the owl hooted in disapproval at the sight of his naked arse. Everyone did that. It wasn't like an owl's comment mattered.

Malfoy hadn't let the horror of that kiss drive him away. He was still going to give Harry a chance.

That made him so different from everyone else that Harry could easily forgive the delay in the owl he'd sent.

* * *

Draco took a step back and looked critically around the room. He had prepared it as best he could for a romantic evening with Potter—and that was what he was going to make it, not just an evening of blowjobs and nothing else. He wondered how long it would take Potter to realize that was what he was aiming for.

_Perhaps he'll be entirely blind, but he seemed to like the atmosphere of the Sapphire Rose well enough._

Draco hadn't tried to mimic that, not entirely. He thought what Potter had most liked about the place was the size and the magic used, so this was the second-biggest dining room the Manor had to offer, with white walls and enchanted windows showing expanses of green grass that made it appear even bigger. Still, the only table was small and intimate, made of cherry wood and glowing in the light of candles that Draco had enchanted to float in the air. They could move elsewhere at the push of a wand, but otherwise would follow a course that would let them illuminate the ivory plates, the hands and eyes of two people dining at the table, in a steady, gentle glow.

Draco nodded, and glanced at the sideboard. All the foods he intended to let Potter choose from were already there, under Warming or Cooling or Stasis Charms as was appropriate. Draco didn't intend to let house-elves intrude on this evening, either, even by letting them make the food appear on the plates.

"Malfoy?"

The only open Floo in the Manor this evening led into this room, so it shouldn't have surprised Draco so much to hear Potter's voice. Maybe it wasn't surprise but anticipation that made Draco's throat clench and the muscles in his shoulders hunch. But he did manage to turn around and smile. "Potter," he said, holding out his hand to help Potter down from the high, decorative hearth that almost all his guests tripped over. "I'm glad you came."

"I'm glad you wrote."

There was such _wonder _in his voice, and the look in his eyes, watching Draco over their joined hands, made Draco feel as if he ought to be a jeweled treasure on his very own velvet cushion. He flushed and inclined his head. "I hope that you like to make your own choices as to food, and not just from a limited menu," he said, waving his hand at the sideboard. "There's a lot here."

"There _is_." Potter followed his glance, then darted another one at Draco and grinned. "What was it that made you not accept my offer to pay for our food? Were you afraid of which restaurant I'd choose?"

Draco had to smile back, although part of him wondered at the way Potter could joke. Did his own pain not matter that much to him? Or had he just got so used to ignoring it that the relief from it was the gift, and he didn't really see the pain itself as an injury?

_If that's so, then I'm going to have much more work to do here than I ever imagined._

For now, though, Draco only shook his head and said, "I wanted to feed you here. And give us some privacy."

Potter's eyes grew heavy and deep at once. He stepped up to Draco and ran his hands down Draco's hips, pausing where the fabric outlined the bones. "Would you like me to give you some more dessert?" he whispered. "Because I could do that, if you decided that you needed me to."

Draco held back the sharp noise he wanted to make, the sharp words he wanted to say about how Potter seemed to think of nothing but sex. "Not right now," he said, and his voice was steady. "I want you to sit down and eat with me."

"I thought I was going to serve myself." Potter glanced back and forth between the sideboard and the table, seeming to notice the absence of house-elves.

"Let me serve you," Draco said, seeing an opportunity to teach the first lesson in a subtle way. "Please?"

* * *

Harry was slightly worried about Malfoy. It was nice of him to invite Harry to his house for dinner, and apparently he had put the horrible kiss behind him, but he looked at Harry in an odd, quick, darting way, always turning his eyes off to the side again, and he had offered to _serve _him, and he had said _please. _That didn't fit with the Malfoy Harry thought he knew, the one who had insulted him less than ten minutes into their date last night.

And it didn't fit with the Malfoy he had been sure would accept his offer of a casual relationship, and fulfill a few of his fantasies in doing so.

But maybe this meant nothing and he was overthinking things—another fault that Frank had made him aware of. Harry smiled and sat down at the table. "If you want to," he said, just to make sure that he wasn't compelling Malfoy against Malfoy's own desires.

"I want to," Malfoy said, giving Harry a cautious look, as though _he _was the one who might be compelled against his will. Harry responded to that by slinging his arms along the back of his chair and crossing his legs. He had debated putting his feet on the table, but even he felt that was a little beyond the pale when it came to a place where food would soon be served. Malfoy shook his head at Harry as it was, before turning to the sideboard and picking up a platter loaded with almost transparent slices of ham. He Summoned the plate in front of Harry with a flick of his wand.

"What, I don't even get to _choose_?" Harry half-complained. He knew the chances that Malfoy would give him something he hated were slim, but he had thought Malfoy would dish up some food based on what Harry said.

"I think I know your tastes, from that night at the Sapphire Rose," Malfoy said, giving him a quick glance. "I'd like to do this, if you don't mind."

Harry flipped his hand. "Go ahead. And I know _your _taste, too." He eyed Malfoy, and wondered what the chances of getting his mouth on him were tonight, given that Malfoy had already resisted one offer.

Malfoy's flush was immediate, but he didn't seem inclined to relent. He busied himself with the ham instead, and something Harry thought was quiche, and then salad that was thick with berries. Harry reclined and watched him.

He tried to remember the last time he had done something like this with someone, and then shook his head. Stupid memories lay in that direction, memories that weren't worth recalling. Harry wanted to wince when he thought about how naïve and blind he had been, when he was with other people. How much he had hurt them without realizing it, like a thoughtless child hurting an animal for the fun of it.

Malfoy turned around and carried the plate over to him. He set it in front of Harry with intense eye contact that cheered Harry up about his prospects for sucking Malfoy later in the evening. But Malfoy did step back when Harry made a teasing move towards his groin.

"No," he murmured, pivoting and walking back to the sideboard to serve himself. "I want you to keep up your strength. I'm going to ask something rather demanding of you, later."

Harry sighed and eyed Malfoy's back, how it led perfectly to slim hips and narrow, flaring buttocks. Not that he would ever get to see much of that part of Malfoy's body, but they'd been _amazing _to touch. "Okay. But I think you're underrating the nourishing properties of semen."

Malfoy choked and half-glared at him. Harry waited, breath held, but Malfoy shook his head and turned back to the sideboard instead of chucking him out. Harry had to laugh to himself as he began to eat—and the food was indeed delicious, proving Malfoy knew him.

He had even found a lover who could put up with his sense of humor. _Could _the night get any better?

* * *

Draco watched beneath his eyelids, and sometimes his fringe, as Potter ate. When he asked questions about Auror business, Potter told him, seeming to harbor no suspicion that Draco might still be involved in anything nefarious. Of course, Draco was head of the Potions Division, and Potter probably thought few more boring positions existed.

Draco patted at his mouth with his napkin, and swallowed. The position was challenging, not boring, but it must not have been challenging enough, or would he be taking this on at all?

But there was something about Potter that went deeper than the challenge, loathe though he was to admit it. Something that made his heart beat as well as his eyes tighten, and made him stare at Potter's fingers curled around his glass of wine until Potter caught his glance and lifted his brows, and Draco turn away blushing. Yes, there was something else.

Perhaps he couldn't define it right now. Perhaps he would have to wait until he saw that this would work before he knew exactly what Potter meant to him.

But he knew one thing: it was already more than an eager mouth and a few conveniences on nights when he wanted someone in his bed. He'd wanted acknowledgment. A convenient mouth couldn't give acknowledgment.

"This is _really _good."

Draco glanced up and felt his mouth softening. Potter had his face practically buried in his plate as he gulped down some of the small slivers of him and berries that had rolled away from the main salad.

"I wouldn't have invited you to my house if I thought my house-elves incapable of providing good food," Draco said, leaning back in his chair and reaching for his wine glass. He had drunk only a little so far, and it would _remain _a little. There was no way that he wanted to lose control around Potter. He would need to choose his words as carefully as his actions.

"So they did make it, even though they didn't serve it?" Potter studied him with a difficult expression on his face.

"Can you see _me _slaving in a kitchen?" Draco asked, gesturing down his body, and Potter laughed and leaned back in his chair.

"I suppose you have a few too many muscles for that." Potter's smile twisted at the edges, and he looked as though he had a hard time preventing himself from popping up from his chair. "Let me feel them to make sure?"

_All he ever thinks about is sex. _But then, at the moment, Potter had no idea what else Draco might offer him. The lesson of the food—that Potter deserved the best and Draco wanted to give it to him—hadn't taken in the way Draco had hoped.

"In a moment, Potter," Draco murmured, sitting up and leaning forwards. "Why do you think I wanted to see you again?"

Potter blinked, slowly. "You like having someone to spoil?"

Draco snorted. "I haven't _started _spoiling you."

"Yeah, didn't think so." Potter considered Draco with that same difficult expression, as though _Draco _was the one who was hard to figure out, and then shrugged. "Really? I think that you decided that, no matter how I kissed, I'm still talented enough elsewhere for you to put up with me. Or you wanted to see what else I can do now that you've had one taste."

Draco didn't _like _feeling the way Potter made him feel, the tight, trembling tension on the edge of incredulity. He wanted to yell, to tell Potter to stop acting like he didn't know his value.

But Potter didn't, and Draco wouldn't undo the damage of years in a single screaming session. He inclined his head. "I did want to see you again. But not for your skill with your mouth."

Potter laughed, full and free, and stood up, inching around the table towards Draco. Draco watched his muscles ripple, concealed but not hidden by his shirt and trousers, and wondered how this man could ever have decided that he wasn't beautiful enough to merit careful treatment. "Come on, Malfoy. We both know it's nothing _else_. Although I have to admit, you have a great sense of humor."

Potter ended up with his hands on the table, leaning over Draco, who returned a steady gaze while his heart fluttered as madly as if he'd been leaping over desks to dodge the effects of a ruined potion. Potter's eyes turned soft when he saw that, and he reached out and trailed his fingers over Draco's throat, letting his fingers rest above the pulse in the hollow of it. "No need to be so nervous," he whispered. "You have a great body."

Draco reached up and gripped Potter's wrist, hard enough to crush a few of the tendons and smash his fingers together. Potter winced as Draco turned his hand over, but didn't try to draw back.

"Sorry," Potter said. "Don't like compliments like that?"

And his eyes were still _soft, _taking all the blame of his clumsy flirtation of himself, willing to believe that he'd crossed some boundary he couldn't have known about, when really, what irritated Draco the most was the unspoken implication behind Potter's words. _You have a great body, and I don't._

To hell with subtle lessons, then. No, Draco wouldn't undo the damage of years in a single screaming session, but if he never made a start, then he would never do anything but let Potter suck him off until one of them got bored.

"I hate being compared to other people," Draco said, which was true enough, as he used his hold on Potter's wrist to spin Potter around and pin him with Potter's back against his chest. He leaned down and spoke quietly into his ear, noting that Potter stood tense and alert, but not nervous—as if he knew that he could break out of Draco's hold at any time. He probably could, with his Auror training. And there was no way that he would think of this position as intimate, given his complexes. "I told you that almost immediately."

"But I didn't say anything about a former lover, yours _or _mine," Potter said, craning his head back to look at Draco. "What do you mean?"

Baffled, blinking, and Draco wanted to kiss him, but he knew how that would end right now. He used words instead, making them as sharp as he could, to drill through the layers of misunderstanding laid down over Potter's already thick skull. "You said _I_ have a great body. And based on what you've said and done so far, I know what that means. You don't think that _you_ do. I happen to disagree."

* * *

Harry froze. The hand that held his wrist, and still hurt, became less important than the disbelief that filled him, that rocketed through him, that burst like a supernova and burned inside his brain.

He couldn't…

He couldn't _believe _that Malfoy was like this, that he wanted to talk about this and use the information Harry had freely given him bloody _against _him.

He flung himself to the side, flicking his head back at the same time, forcing Malfoy to release him or sustain a broken nose. Harry turned fully to face the bastard, hands clasped in front of him, eyes darting to the exits of the room. Only the Floo was really feasible. The door beyond Malfoy led out into a corridor, from the slight glimpse of color Harry could see past it, and Harry didn't know the Manor well enough to navigate around it.

"Potter." Malfoy took a step towards him, eyes wide and hand extended as if everything would make sense if he could just grab Harry back.

"No," Harry growled, and darted towards the fireplace.

He saw the glow of the tripwire ward just before he spilled over it, and tucked himself into a roll, flinging his arms around his head so he wouldn't bash it in on the hearth. Then he got up, hopped over it, and started towards the Floo again.

This time, the looping silvery ward that appeared in front of it was one Harry knew and hated, one he'd had to contend with a lot when he was investigating houses abandoned by their owners. No one but a wizard of the correct bloodline could destroy such a ward, and it prevented all access to what was beyond it—in this case, any escape from the Floo.

Harry turned, his arms clasped closely to his side. "Listen," he said, harsh as a croaking bird.

Malfoy had said the exact same word at the exact same time. He blinked a second, and then stepped forwards. "Listen," he repeated. "Potter—"

"You're either some sort of bloody scar fetishist," Harry said, speaking fast, because if he listened to Malfoy for too long the git might persuade Harry the way he'd already done, "or you intend to mock me, lead me on, and then dump me when I start believing you. That's what it is, isn't it? I should have known." _Malfoy _approaching him after all this time was ridiculous. Harry could have believed it of Zabini or Nott, maybe, Slytherins he'd never been friends with but never enemies with either, but he just had too much history with Malfoy. It hadn't been enough to stop him from spending one night with Malfoy, but Harry could only be thankful that it had enabled him to catch Malfoy before he did something Harry could _really _regret.

"I'm not either," Malfoy said. He looked as offended as though Harry had said his profile was inbred. "I want—I want to help you. You're saying all sorts of things about your body that aren't true, and I want to change that."

Harry stared at him with his mouth open. _That _was the cover Malfoy had come up with for his slip?

Harry guffawed, because he had to, after those moments in which Malfoy didn't move but just stared at him with serious eyes. "Pull the other one, Malfoy."

Malfoy shook his head. "Look, I'm not going to lie. The kiss _was _horrible. But I don't think it has to be. I want—I want to see you actually come for me. I want to be able to touch you and not have you run away. I want to teach you better."

Harry's belly tightened. This was the sort of thing he had dreamed about during the months when he stumbled around after Frank, before Veronica, wishing that someone cared enough about him to take him in hand and show him what he was doing wrong.

But it was also the sort of thing that didn't happen. Harry knew that, because he had experienced a partial version of it. Veronica had _tried. _She had shown him some of the things he was doing wrong, and showed him how to slow down when he was kissing, and told him when she didn't like the way he grabbed and squeezed and pressed.

But in the end, it didn't matter. Harry was too deficient; Veronica just didn't have enough patience. And Veronica had been a hell of a lot more invested in him than Malfoy was.

"I assure you," Harry said, tilting his head back and straightening his shoulders and trying to decide what about him had presented as pathetic enough for Malfoy to make this offer, "I've tried to improve on my own, and had other people tell me what was wrong, and it didn't _matter. _Nothing changes, except I get clumsier. I've made my peace with it. I improved my sucking skills. Isn't that enough?" He grimaced at the pleading tone in his own voice. He should have walked out the Floo before things got to this stage, the minute Malfoy had acted hesitant about having Harry's mouth on him again. Someone who didn't want the only thing Harry had to offer was someone with unrealistic expectations. "What else do you _want_?"

He waited, but Malfoy didn't say anything, only watched him with that pale, pointy face that had gone back to being hard for Harry to understand. He understood when Malfoy was taunting him, or lost in the depths of pleasure, but this was neither. Malfoy just seemed to be thinking.

"What is there to _think _about?" Harry finally snapped. "You want what I can offer, or you don't want it. You let me walk out of here, or you let me stay and suck you. What other options are there?"

* * *

Draco wanted to rage, but there would have been no one to direct the rage at, except people who weren't there and wouldn't know what he was talking about if they were. Raging at Potter was counterproductive.

Potter believed every single stupid word he was saying. That was obvious. Draco shook his head and took a step forwards. Potter tensed, but seemed to decide he was tired of backing away, because he stood there with arms folded and took it.

"What makes your mouth so different from everything else?" Draco asked. "Why did you think you could get good at that, and not anything else?"

Potter blinked at him, but answered. "Because that was the one skill that actually _improved _when I tried. And besides, it's the only one I could think of that doesn't involve touching someone else too much. They could always pull away if they didn't like it. But wanking someone, or fucking someone, or kissing someone…it's too much of the body. The less contact someone else has with me, the happier they are."

Draco really did want to throw something. But the candles were too expensive, and so were the dishes, and everything else was too big. He settled for coming close enough to lean an elbow on the fireplace mantle, ignoring the longing way that Potter eyed the Floo entrance behind him. "And what about you?"

"I told you what I like already," Potter said, half-crouching. "I told you what I can offer. Why are you ignoring it? I know you're not stupid enough to have forgotten."

Draco ignored the insult. "I meant, are you happy this way?"

"I was happier the other night than I've been in a long time," Potter said evenly, "because you seemed to enjoy it."

"That's a no, then," Draco said. Potter glared at him as though Draco had done something deadly to him by not playing along with his stupid little game. Draco ignored that, too. "I want _you _to enjoy it, too, Potter. Despite what you might think of me, I'm not someone who just wants to take and take and not give."

"But why can't you be?" Potter held out one hand towards him. "Sure, with normal people you might be different, but with me? That's what I can offer you. So you have the _right _to be selfish for once. You can do whatever you like. Why don't you just take that and then tell me when you're tired of it?"

_Normal people. _Draco felt the bile burning in his throat, destroying the last taste of the fine food he'd eaten.

"I am tired of it," Draco said.

He'd never seen someone withdraw into himself as fast as Potter did. His face became smooth, his outstretched hand dropped to his side, and he nodded. "All right," he said. His voice was as empty as his plate. "Let me go, then. Please," he added, when Draco didn't move away from the fireplace or drop the ward.

"I'm tired of it," Draco said, "because I want something more. Something that isn't casual. Something where you give me more than just your mouth." He took a stalking step towards Potter.

Potter, who just watched him with those empty eyes and said, as if he worked in a restaurant, "I'm sorry, that isn't available." Then he shook his head and shut his eyes. "Look, Malfoy, I hope you find it with your next lover, I really do. But you won't with me."

"Because you won't give me a bloody chance to do it," Draco said, and he was close enough now to reach out and grab Potter's right hand, the one with the Blood Quill scar on the back. "You gave other people who were more ready to betray you a chance. Why not me?"

"Because they taught me what I was," Potter snapped, and once again twisted smoothly away, staring at Draco's palm as if he thought his scar would have scarred Draco in return. "You—you have no idea, really, what you're escaping by not sleeping with me. It's _horrible. _I'm rude and inconsiderate and ugly and I _hurt _people. Not to mention all the emotional damage that comes along with me. A casual relationship, if you wanted one, would let you escape all that. Why do you _want _more?"

"Because I want more from you, already," Draco said. "Someone who was honest and came to me about Daphne's gossip, someone who thinks I need to be protected, someone who has a sense of humor and cares that much for my pleasure. And you're going to let me have it."

Potter smiled at him, reaching up towards his throat. Draco saw his hand rest on the top button of his shirt as Potter said, sweetly, "No, I'm not."

And he vanished into the swirling pinwheel of colors that was typical of a Portkey, leaving Draco staring, in the moments before he whirled around, seized one of the wineglasses, and had the satisfaction of smashing something delicate after all.

* * *

Harry landed in the middle of his drawing room rug, breathing so hard he almost vomited. He sagged to his knees and put his hands on them.

The emergency Portkey was really only supposed to be used in situations that risked his life. But Harry thought it could be justified in situations that risked someone _else's, _too. And he knew there was a high chance that he would have hurt Malfoy if he remained there, either directly, because of his magic lashing out, or…

Or later. Because he might have agreed to Malfoy's wild scheme, and hurt him just like he'd hurt Veronica and Frank and Kurt and Ginny and all the rest.

_Isn't six people hurt because of me enough? _

Harry straightened up, shaking his head. He had done the best he could to tell Malfoy the truth, and Malfoy still didn't believe him. Maybe he wouldn't until after he had spent one horrible night with Harry and _seen_. But Harry didn't believe in letting someone else experience pain just to convince them.

No, Harry would go back to normal now, and never date a wizard again. Or only someone he was convinced _wanted _to take what Harry wanted to give them, and nothing else.

_Malfoy is mad. Or convinced that he would receive some benefit from my fame by sleeping with me._

_But I bet he'll also be too humiliated to face me again, because of the rumors I might spread about him, whereas I wouldn't care if he said something. I'm stronger than he is. _Harry half-smiled as he reached down to touch the small of his back. _I have more scars._

_He won't come near me again._

* * *

Which made the specter of Malfoy standing by his desk the next morning, arms folded and eyes implacably on Harry, something of a shock.


	5. Patience

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Patience_

"I'm sorry, mate. I told him to leave, but he wouldn't, and I couldn't make him."

Harry clenched his jaw and said nothing for a moment, but eased the tight hold and patted Ron's shoulder when he saw Ron turning red. Like it was his best friend's fault for not being able to send Malfoy away, when Harry couldn't do it himself.

_Although I'll have to do a better job now, or he'll keep hanging around me as if he has the right to do it._

"It's all right," Harry told Ron. "I think I know the best way to make him back off. He won't want to come within a mile of me by the time I'm done with him."

He stalked up to Malfoy, who lounged against the wall next to Harry's desk as though he'd been part of the Ministry's original architecture. Malfoy straightened up a little when he saw Harry coming, but he didn't move his arms or the expression on his face. It was implacable. Harry grimaced. He could imagine Malfoy wearing that expression on his face. More, he could imagine Malfoy standing like this all night. He would have had to get here pretty early to beat both Harry and Ron.

"Listen," Harry said, walking up to Malfoy and standing in front of him so Ron couldn't see the punishing grip Harry inflicted on the git's arm. Ron might have been tempted to interfere if he saw, if only to keep Harry from getting into trouble, and Harry wasn't interested in that. "You made it clear that you want something I can't give you. Stop hanging around me, or I'll tell everyone exactly how bad you taste."

Malfoy's mouth fell open a little. Then he said, "You would spread—bedroom gossip about me? The exact same thing you got angry at _Daphne _for doing?" His hands shook for a second, and then he lifted his free one and touched the ends of his hair as though he needed to make sure that it was still on his head. "I thought you weren't that kind of person."

Harry stirred uneasily. Malfoy looked as though he'd just been told an earthquake had destroyed the Ministry. "I would tell a lie and contribute to gossip to make you leave me the fuck alone and spare myself from being the target of _more _gossip, yes," he said.

Malfoy blinked, and then gave a faint smile. Harry let him go and stepped back. _Fuck him anyway. No one else in the Ministry would smile when I threaten them._

"I would just have to accept that as the price of having you, I suppose," Malfoy said calmly, not taking his eyes from Harry.

Harry braced his hands on his desk. He was having a hard time breathing because of the liquid fury that curled up through his lungs, and Ron's uneasy sidelong glances weren't helping. All his friends knew what had happened with his lovers, and Ron and Hermione probably knew about Ginny from her side, too, but none of them had _seen _it happening. Harry wanted to break away and run, and he wanted to draw his wand, and he wanted to beg and plead with Malfoy, and none of it would work.

"You can't have me," Harry finally managed to whisper, when he had his voice down to manageable levels. "Some of the others thought they could, and they gave up and got hurt and ran away. I don't want to hurt you. I just want you to do the other things."

Malfoy moved a step nearer, his smile gone. "I would never try to have sex with you against your will," he said quietly. "But I'm unwilling to just give up."

"Why?" Harry asked, after he had closed his eyes and worked through his own rage for a couple of seconds. It shouldn't have taken that long, but it did, the same way that he should have been a normal kisser and fucker and fuckee, but he wasn't. "I haven't given you any encouragement, and you know how awfully I kiss, and all I'm focused on is sex. There's nothing attractive in any of that."

"Do you _know _what you're like?" Malfoy whispered in response. "What I think you could be like?"

The fury abruptly earthed itself in ashes. _Oh. _Malfoy was going to be like Andy, the memories that still hurt so badly Harry flinched from thinking of them.

Harry folded his arms and leaned on his own desk. He wanted to go away and drink, now, a lot. But that wasn't an appropriate response for the middle of the Ministry, either, and there were more people wandering by in the corridors, now, or hanging around and openly staring.

_Damn Malfoy._

"You think of me as someone who could be a good _potential _lover, right?" Harry asked gently. "Someone you could train and teach to be better at dating you than I am right now?" He wouldn't get more specific with talking about bad sex where so many people were listening, but surely Malfoy would understand.

Malfoy blinked, and lifted his head a little. "Yes," he said. "I don't think you're inherently horrible. No one is."

Harry wished he could introduce Malfoy to Frank, and then stand back and watch the fireworks. But it probably wouldn't go the way he thought it would, because he had never understood Frank, and he didn't understand Malfoy now. Hell, maybe they would end up bonding over his flaws, and fucking on the floor while shouting their own names.

That thought brought a small smile to Harry's face and calmed him down even more. He shook his head. "I've had a few people who tried to date me thinking they could change me," he said. "Or who thought that I was going through a phase instead of—really like this." One woman was almost leaning on the shoulder of another Auror to see their confrontation. No way would he speak more clearly than this. "It didn't work for them, and it ended up causing them great pain. Let me warn you away right now, before you experience the same thing."

Malfoy moved closer. "You're very concerned with my pain," he murmured. "What are you, a sadist?"

Harry didn't flinch, carefully. "Yes," he answered. "But one who didn't know what I was for a long time, and someone who thought their pain was a sign of affection for me, and someone who never knew when to stop causing it. And it's all emotional pain, not the pleasurable kind. So I'm not safe for other people to be around."

* * *

Draco didn't let his smile falter, but that came more from the kind of training that his father had inflicted on him before Hogwarts than because he really wanted to keep his face calm and clear.

_Is there anything I can find that won't play into his defenses and strengthen his conviction that he's undesirable, somehow? _

Draco was starting to wonder if there _was. _He understood better, now, how Potter had handled malicious gossip and the defection of his lovers. He had admitted everything, if only to himself, and built a fortress wall out of weaknesses. Know the worst about yourself, and tell it to people who got close enough, and no one else could hurt you.

So. Draco couldn't resort to the insults and the impatience that were habitual to him when confronted with this sort of nonsense, whether in a lover or someone else. He had to build on the patience he had learned more with Potions than with people.

"You're very concerned with my pain," he repeated. "I find it patronizing."

The faintest flicker in Potter's eyes, but he didn't drop the smile that widened across his lips. "Good. Then you should go away, before I patronize you again."

"You're essentially judging that I won't know when I'm hurt, and I'll take risks that are unacceptable to me, by becoming involved with you," Draco continued. "You don't trust me to know when enough's enough. You don't trust me to know what I want." He took another step nearer. "And what I want is you."

"You haven't given me a single credible reason why."

_Oh, he's good. _Of course, almost all of that would come from his lovers in the past and what they had done to him, but Draco could admire skilled emotional fencing when he saw it, and Potter was much better at it than Draco would have thought he could be when he was a schoolboy with him.

"Because I want to see what happens," Draco said. It wasn't the most credible reason, perhaps, but it was his honest one. "Because of the reasons I mentioned when you talked to me last." No one else needed to hear them, not right now.

"Because I was honest and have a sense of humor?" Potter shook his head. "You can find that anywhere. And I'm trying to be protective of you, as you wanted, but you seem to reject my efforts." He gave Draco a pointed look.

Draco became more aware of their audience, then, and managed to hold back on the impulse to draw his wand and cast Privacy Charms. He hadn't so far, and doing it now would just give more support to the theory that he had something to hide. He didn't want to do that if only because Daphne would clap her hands for glee when she heard.

"I want to date you," he said. "Will you date me?"

"No."

Potter pivoted on one heel and walked back to his desk, as though he considered this conversation over. Draco followed him. He could tell from the slight hunch of Potter's shoulders as he sat down that this was affecting him, and from Weasley's werewolf glare that he might be courting danger, but he couldn't pay attention to that right now.

"I want you," Draco said softly, directly into Potter's ear. "More than I've wanted anyone for a long time. What would you say to a date where we didn't need to sleep together? A dinner, a conversation, perhaps some dancing?"

Potter tensed up all over, as though someone had poured an Alertness Potion down his spine, starting from his shoulders. Then he looked up and gave Draco a fake smile that he didn't even have the decency to pretend wasn't fake. "I'm not good at dancing, either."

"Then what do you like to do?" Draco perched himself on the corner of Potter's desk, and as though that was less objectionable to standing over him, Weasley grunted and went back to his work. Draco watched Potter's bowed head. He was beginning to think that it was a mistake to have confronted Potter at the Ministry. Mostly, he had wanted a public setting so that Potter wouldn't find it so easy to slip away, but there were too many things he couldn't say here.

"Eat by myself, and go to bed early," Potter said, and this time his smile had turned almost poisonously sweet.

"A compromise," Draco said, smiling at Potter. "Invite me over to your house for dinner, and I'll eat with you in silence. It'll be like being by yourself."

Potter's jaw fell, although he shot up a hand and caught it, propping it back into place before it could start looking ridiculous. "What?" he whispered. "You would—why would you _do _something like that?"

"Because I want to be with you," Draco said. "If it takes longer and I have to do some unusual things, that's the price I have to pay."

"You have no idea about the price you'll pay," Potter whispered harshly, leaning towards him and letting his warm breath stroke over Draco's lips. Draco shut his eyes and listened to the rhythm of air moving in and out of Potter's lungs. He wondered if any of Potter's other lovers had ever sat like this and simply listened to him. "The real one. The one that'll batter your heart and your body."

"That's what someone else told you, isn't it?" Draco raised his hand without opening his eyes, and caught Potter's hand exactly where he expected to find it, tracing over the delicate bones of his wrist. "And you think it was the truth for everyone?"

Potter's hand tensed in his, and then Potter gave a strong yank. Draco stood up, sliding easily down from the desk, and opened his eyes. Yes, it was the right hand he held, the one with the scar from the Blood Quill on the back.

"It was the truth that I ignored for too long," Potter said, looking straight at him, and with his eyes full of shining light and defiance and flame that Draco wanted to touch. _He's made his weakness into his strength, indeed. _"I don't want to ignore it for anyone else, so I'm going to make sure that no one else gets hurt."

Draco raised Potter's hand further. He knew that Potter wouldn't suspect what Draco was really doing until it was too late. He would just think Draco was displaying the scar to their audience. "This was something else that hurt someone, didn't it?"

_Or you think it did. _But he wouldn't soften that, not at this moment.

Potter sat up straighter. "Yes, it did. You don't think it's ugly, looking at it?"

Draco thought it was hideous. But it made him ache with a desperate, painful hopelessness to see Potter sitting there, expecting to be scorned, to be mocked, to be walked away from, and that made him wish that someone had put Dittany on the scar in time or that Umbridge had never tortured Potter, not that he'd never seen the scar.

Draco drew Potter's hand up and up, until Potter had to stand. Potter came easily, his lips twisted into a half-smile. He thought he knew all about what Draco was doing, and his stance said that no one could humiliate or hurt him anymore.

Draco lifted Potter's hand to his lips and kissed the scar, straight on one of the sloppy curves of the _s_ in _lies_.

Potter tried again to pull back, but shock made him weak, and Draco finished the kiss first. He placed Potter's hand back on the desk and bowed, deeply, at the waist, but keeping his head raised so that his eyes were never off Potter's.

"I think what was done to you was uglier," Draco said, and then straightened up, and smiled, and walked away from Potter, through the crowd of watchers who parted for him. Draco still wished he could have done that gesture in private, but it would have been easier for Potter to dismiss it there. And it was Draco's own bad judgment that meant they had an audience, anyway.

_There, Potter. Dismiss _that.

* * *

_Is he mad? _

Harry stared at the back of his hand, the part of the scar that Malfoy had kissed. How could he? He didn't have Frank's long intimacy with Harry, true, and thus maybe he had less reason to flinch from the scar, but he knew the person who had inflicted it. That ought to make him more cautious about associating with Harry, not less.

_I think what was done to you was uglier._

But the scar _was _what was done to him. Harry clenched his hand into a fist, and watched the way the monstrous words wavered back and forth for a second before he turned his back and sat down at his desk.

"Show's over," he added, to the people who were still almost climbing over each other in the corridors to watch him. "Or are you watching for something that you can tell your grandchildren about and claim was seen decently?"

The audience left, after that. Harry sighed and kept working, filing at least two reports before Ron cleared his throat.

Harry spun to face him, then, and raised a Privacy Charm around their desks and cubicle. If he was going to have another distressingly intimate conversation, he would have it with charms on from the beginning. "Yeah?" he asked.

"What did Malfoy mean with that last thing he said?" Ron had his feet up on his desk again, his hands behind his head. Hermione would scold them if she saw, Harry thought with a smile that he knew was faint.

He rubbed his forehead and sighed. Malfoy had confused everything, just when Harry was sure that he finally had his life sorted, and had had his decision not to date in the wizarding world confirmed. He had been stupid trying. He ought to stick to Muggles and people who would never know who he was and never want anything more from him.

_I confuse people just by being near them. I must have confused Malfoy, or he wouldn't have wanted to date me at all._

"I don't know," Harry said, rubbing his hand's scar this time. "What was done to me, if not this? Is he referring to Umbridge's punishment? But that has nothing to do with why we wouldn't work if I tried to date him. The scar does."

Ron cleared his throat. Harry glanced over at him. That had been a _significant _throat-clearing, the kind Ron only did when he was sure he had a perspective on a situation that Harry hadn't considered, and then usually it was about work.

"What?" Harry asked, when Ron didn't go on but stared at the paperwork on his desk as if that held the answer.

"I think," Ron said, voice as delicate as new ice, "that he meant the things Frank and the rest did to you were uglier."

Harry got up from his chair. He stood there for a second, with his hands on the back of it, and said, "But he doesn't know about those, not in any detail. And he knows what I did to them. I think he has his pronouns wrong. I think he probably meant that what _I _did to _them _was uglier."

"And now you're patronizing him again," Ron said mildly.

Harry shook his head and turned away. Malfoy had confused him too badly. He knew that he would get nothing done if he remained here, and there were people who needed his best. He would send a memo to the Head Auror and the Head of the Department, telling them he was leaving. Otherwise, there would be panic and worry, like there had been over the latest kidnap scare.

His fingers shook as he dashed off the note, and he had to close his eyes and draw in a deep, slow breath before he could finish it. But when he opened his eyes again, Ron was there and taking the note from him, giving him a sympathetic smile before he leaned in to speak into Harry's ear.

"No matter what decision you make, mate," he said, taking Harry's hand and gripping it, "I'm here for you. Hermione's here for you. That'll never change."

Harry leaned against him for one long moment, wishing he could stay. But the confusion Malfoy had stirred up in him lashed the sides of his mind like a whirlwind, and Harry had to shake his head and pull away.

"Thanks, Ron," he whispered. "But I have to go home and do—_something_. Take a run or cast spells in my training room or _something_. Something that'll use up the energy."

Ron nodded—Harry had covered for him, too, when Hermione had been ambushed and hurt by people who didn't like the legal changes she was proposing—and he stood guard over Harry's desk as Harry rushed out of the Ministry. The privacy charms were down, and people gawked and gaped and tried to make excuses to bump into Harry on his way out and chat with him.

But Harry had got good at avoiding people over the last year, when he started admitting there could be no one in the wizarding world for him, and he no longer saw gossip as something he owed his co-workers. So he slid around them with a smile and a nod and a vague promise of "later," and emerged into the sunlight with his eyes shut and his lungs drawing in bigger gulps of air than he had known he was capable of.

He stood there for a few minutes with his arms folded, calming down. If it had been night, he knew where he would have gone. The Muggle clubs would be calling to him, promising the sort of relaxation that only came when Harry was giving pleasure to someone else and _knew _he was, making up, in some respects, for all the crimes he had committed in the past.

But it was day, bright day, and Harry made his choice of a different goal. He Apparated home, almost scraped the lock off the door getting it open, and then grabbed the running shoes and clothes Hermione had given him for his last birthday. Three minutes later, he was pounding down the street, head lowered, trying his best to outrun the chaos Malfoy had dumped back into his life just when Harry had thought everything was settled, beautifully arranged.

* * *

Draco looked up at the sound of applause. It was the sound he had been more or less longing for since he successfully arranged for the brewing of seven hundred vials of Wolfsbane, but he hadn't thought it would happen outside his head.

Daphne stood near the door. Draco stood up and advanced quickly on her, and Daphne fell back a step, but then shook her head and walked towards him instead. Draco could see from the quiver in her lip that it was hard for her, but she smiled at him and said, "Well _done, _Draco. Really. I'm impressed."

Draco locked his door with a single flick of his wand, not taking his eyes from Daphne's face. He didn't miss the way she swallowed, or the way her eyes flicked sideways towards the lock, just for a second.

"Daphne," he said gently. "You have two seconds to tell me what you're doing here before I cast the Entrail-Expelling Curse on you."

She gasped, but the words rushed out before the deadline Draco had given her was up. "Wh—what I meant was that Potter has run away from the Ministry for the day. Sent some memo claiming that he just _had _to get away and his superiors would have to excuse him. The great Harry Potter, running from his own shadow. What _could _it be due to but that little conversation you had with him in his cubicle this morning?"

Draco wanted to curse, but restrained himself with a single grind of his teeth. He ought to have anticipated this. He ought not to have confronted Harry at work in the first place, he could admit to himself now. He had only done it because he had been worried that Harry would think Draco had given up if he didn't, and Draco wanted to show Harry that he finally had someone who would follow him from one end of the earth to the other if he had to.

But Harry hadn't taken it that way.

_And I spend an awful lot of time calling him Harry when I was thinking of him as Potter just this morning._

Draco threw the thought away. It was a weak one, not one that he had time for at the moment. "Where did you learn this?"

"The things that you can learn with a bit of flirting, a bit of bribery, and Disillusionment Charms," Daphne said, lowering her eyelashes.

"Good," Draco said, unlocking his door and casting a few spells at his office so that Daphne—or anyone else who might have a grudge against him at the moment—couldn't mess up his paperwork or his potions. "Then it was ordinary eavesdropping and gossip-hunting that anyone could do, and maybe I can convince Potter to spare your life when I find him."

"What are you talking about?" Daphne was following him, staring at him. Since that was what Draco had wanted, rather than her remaining in his office to damage anything, he didn't try to stop her, and only turned to confront her when they were in the middle of the corridor. Daphne stood there with her hands knotting into one another, her eyes huge and focused on Draco as though he was the one who had threatened _her_. "What do you mean? Everyone knows that Potter is just temperamental and prone to taking off like this. I-it doesn't mean that he's stalking me to kill me."

_Even better. _Draco had only meant to make up a tale of Potter losing his temper, but the best lies were the ones that people convinced themselves of. He shrugged and eyed Daphne up and down, as though estimating her ability to survive in battle against Potter. "I don't know for sure. But you ought to remember how successful Potter has been at tracking down criminals, and _taking _them down. Not even some of the Aurors know how he does it."

That, at least, was true, and it made Daphne scuttle away like the rat she was. Draco chuckled, and then turned and began to wave his wand in the complicated charm that would let him track a moving target and weave a chain between their location and Draco's mind. Technically, the spell was illegal, but not enough on that side for the Ministry to have wards detecting it when it was cast.

The chain shimmered into being behind Draco's eyelids as he closed them, silver and made of long, gleaming links, touching the center of his forehead between the eyes. Draco opened his eyes, smiled, said, "Perfect," aloud, and began to stride down the corridor.

He did pause to turn around and cast a single sign at his door, in case someone besides Daphne linked his disappearance to Potter's.

_Gone for lunch_.

* * *

Harry bent over, his hands on his knees and then wandering up to hold his stomach. He didn't know how long he had run. A few miles, he suspected. Maybe five. Maybe more. He was still in wizarding London, but barely. He rubbed at the pain forming in his side, winced, and stood up, only he had to blink away sweat like tears before he could see where he was.

Some unfamiliar street, at least half Muggle, if the buildings standing around him told the truth. Harry shrugged. Everywhere was the same distance from home when you could Apparate. He took out his wand.

Then there came the sound of someone Apparating in behind him.

Harry leaped into the air and twisted around, landing crouched on the balls of his feet, his wand up and his mouth already open in a snarl of gladness. Dealing with an enemy was the best outlet for his wild energy of all, because that meant he was doing something useful at the same time he was calming himself down.

Which made it all the more bitter to see Malfoy standing there. Harry put his wand down, swallowed frustration as thick as blood, and folded his arms. "What do you want, Malfoy?"

"To talk to you." Malfoy moved a step nearer, and then stopped and looked around as though he was only noticing the Muggle buildings for the first time. Which made no sense, if had Apparated to find Harry, but Harry put that aside to worry about for later. "Why are you _here_? Why would you come to a place like this?" He turned to Harry and waited.

For an answer, Harry supposed. But Harry didn't feel like giving him one. He shrugged at Malfoy and turned away, walking towards a narrow space between two buildings that would keep someone from watching him as he Apparated.

Malfoy trotted after him, more similar to a lost puppy than Harry would ever have suspected he could be. "Where are you going? Home? Will you invite me past the wards?" He _spoke _as if it was a question, but he held out an arm with an air that made it clear he expected to be invited.

Harry turned around and stared at him. It was a good stare, a condescending stare. He had practiced it for those times in the Muggle clubs when someone he didn't really want to sleep with approached him. Malfoy's face flushed a long, slow pink under it, and his chin went up until Harry thought his eyes were watering from the force of his squint.

"No," Harry said, and focused his mind on his flat.

Malfoy grabbed hold of him, effectively stopping him, since otherwise Harry would Side-Along Malfoy whether he wanted to or not, and then his wards would try to reject Malfoy, and it would be a messy situation of exactly the kind that Harry tried not to get into anymore. He shook Malfoy off immediately, but then Malfoy grabbed his other arm, and really, this was getting ridiculous. Harry already regretted that he had shown this much emotion to Malfoy, or told him anything at all about his other lovers. Malfoy was obviously someone who thought he deserved more than he was given, and since that was true all the time, it didn't matter what Harry gave him.

"You're not invited home with me," Harry snapped at him.

"You acted as though you would be happy to invite me home and cook for me a few days ago," Malfoy interrupted, a little breathless. His eyes were wide, and Harry wondered why. Exertion? Unused to being refused? "What changed?"

"You keep _saying _things," Harry said, and kicked hard, with a little twist to the side, in a way that made Malfoy release him and stagger back clutching his knee. "If you'd just wanted a casual relationship, where I sucked you sometimes and we saw each other sometimes, fine. That's the only kind of thing I do. But you had to press further and act like you felt _sorry _for me. And you want things of me that I can't give, like good kisses and a good fuck and _consideration. _Sorry for your luck. But I hear there's a thriving industry in whores glamouring themselves to look like me. I'm sure that you can find one of them who'll do it for you."

"I don't _want _a whore," Malfoy said, his face and voice so stark that Harry could imagine that he'd never worn such an expression or had to speak in such a way in his life before. Well, good for Harry, then. Malfoy needed a few fucking life lessons. "Otherwise, I would have accepted your offer."

Harry bowed and pressed a hand to his heart. "It's flattering to have someone who understands me so well."

Malfoy dodged to the side, then seemed to register that the kick he was expecting hadn't actually come at him, and straightened up, flushing, instead. Harry gave him a sweet smile, fluttered his fingers at him, and turned away again.

"Have you ever tried to have someone _teach _you how to kiss?" Malfoy asked from behind him. "To teach you how to take off your glasses? It might do wonders, if you tried it."

Harry pinched the bridge of his nose. He ought to just leave. Apparate. Ignore Malfoy if he tried to bring this up in the corridors of the Ministry again. Act as though he never made a mistake and went back to dating wizards instead of Muggles. He could be with Muggles for the rest of his life, he knew he could. He'd been content before he started "dating" Malfoy, and he wanted that contentment back.

But Malfoy had always got under his skin, and he was the first wizard Harry had been with in over a year. That gave him some sort of claim, Harry supposed, grudgingly. And it was more than remarkable that Malfoy was still here, when he had already seen how bad Harry was, instead of running the other way.

_Maybe it would take a fuck with me to teach him how useless I am with body parts other than my mouth._

Harry shuddered. He hoped not. He didn't want to either batter Malfoy's arse or shrivel up Malfoy's dick by doing his cold fish impersonation.

He turned back and said, "I tried as hard as I could at everything. I got better with my mouth. But everything else _hurt _someone. Hard to ask the person whose lips you've just lacerated for lessons."

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You're exaggerating."

"I'm not," Harry snapped, thinking of the finger-shaped bruises that Frank had on his hips, and the way Veronica winced away from him after the first time they made love, and the way Jacquelyn touched her lips and closed her eyes after their first kiss. Harry hadn't understood what all of the signals meant at the time, but now he did, with the benefit of hindsight that Frank's clear words had given him. "And I couldn't do anything about hurting them, because I already had. Even Veronica Tobley, who you've probably heard of. I thought I'd learned enough by the time I started sleeping with her not to hurt her, but I still did. Why subject yourself to that?"

* * *

Draco wanted to say so many things, including making fun of Potter for his apparent belief that he could shatter someone's arse just by touching him.

But icy water ran through him when he opened his mouth, and that wasn't magic or even his common sense, which sometimes _did _interfere when he was about to say something sarcastic. It was the truth. He could look into Potter's eyes and see, too clearly, that he believed everything he was saying. Some of it, coming from another person, would be self-pitying exaggeration, and some would be lies repeated from others, with the person who repeated them wanting reassurance.

But Potter had absorbed everything that those people told him and made it part of the barriers that he used to hold others back from him.

_Why? _

Draco wanted to know who had said those things, and why, but most of all, he wanted to know why Potter believed them, where the arrogant boy who had believed he was above the rules and the hero who had done whatever he wanted with his life had gone.

Draco shook his head a little and said, "The people who taught you couldn't have been very good, and everyone knows that you can't learn much about sex by yourself."

Potter's throat twitched, but he didn't answer.

"Let me," Draco whispered, and extended a hand. Potter didn't try to touch it, but he didn't try to avoid it, either. Draco rested it on Potter's cheek. He smiled a little. "See? No snake tried to leap out of your skin and bite my fingers off."

"No, that only happened with a Muggle who tried to touch me without my permission," Potter said absently.

Draco shuddered. Potter's lips turned up in a smirk that Draco never wanted to see again, and he stepped away. "You see?" he whispered. "This wouldn't work even if I was the best at sex you'd ever bedded. You're _scared _of me. Of my magic. And it would probably happen sometime around you. I get more fearful when someone's fearful around me." He closed his eyes. "It happened once in bed. I don't want it to happen again."

Draco shook his head and moved nearer. "I wasn't shuddering for a reason you just made up in your head," he corrected, when he saw Potter looking at him again. "I shuddered because the _thought _of that much magic pouring through you makes me excited." He paused, and then decided he might as well say everything he was thinking. One thing might convince this strange, startling Potter as well as another, Draco understood him so little. "And because I want to be the only one who touches you in a way that you invite."

Potter's lips parted slightly, and he might have been anyone reluctant whom Draco was trying to seduce. Draco tried to encourage that by catching Potter's eye and smiling, showing that, as far as he was concerned, Potter was just another person, someone Draco could respond to normally, and who could respond normally to him.

But Potter snapped his walls up again, shaking his head as though Draco's almost getting past them was a dangerous trick that he wasn't about to let Draco repeat. "No," he said. "You don't really want that. You just _think _you want that."

Draco let his eyes narrow. "Ah," he said. "I understand now how you hurt your lovers."

Potter turned eyes that were almost liquid on him. _This is what he wants, _Draco thought, an ashy disgust curling in his throat. _This is what he understands. The rejection and being told that someone hates him. _

But Draco didn't intend to spend a lot of time gratifying Potter's wishes today. He intended to have _his _gratified, instead. Potter owed it to him after the way he had left Draco hanging the other night. "You patronize them to death until none of them can stand to be around you," Draco finished.

Potter flinched, but folded his arms across his chest as if to hide the sucking wound Draco had just dealt and counterattacked. "How do I patronize you, then?"

"You think you know my own thoughts and desires better than I do." Draco moved in towards him again, and Potter didn't retreat this time, though that might only have been out of rage and not the desire that Draco hoped it was. "You think you have to protect me from being _hurt _by you, as though I was a child playing with fire instead of the grown man, certain of what I want, that I am. Why do you do that?"

"Because I was blind once," Potter said, and the bitterness would be enough to make Draco pause if he hadn't already made up his mind that _nothing _would make him pause. He moved nearer again instead, and Potter was too occupied in staring at the past to stop him. "Because I should have realized long before I did that I was hurting them, and _stopped. _They didn't tell me because they were too kind and gracious to—"

Draco snorted.

Potter turned on him, his body a single coiling whip of muscle. Draco watched him and wondered why _that _quality, at least, hadn't kept some of Potter's lovers in bed. "If you say a word against them, we are _done _here," Potter said quietly. "You don't know anything about them except what the distorted rumors said, and the vast majority of those were created by people who were jealous of them for enjoying me." Potter rolled his eyes. "If they only knew."

His eyes locked on Draco's. "But you're too smart to believe those stupid rumors. So don't you start."

Draco scowled and tried to control his temper, and then decided he might as well let it go. Why not? It wasn't like Potter would be easy to do combat with either way, and this at least had the advantage of being honest. "They didn't tell you because they were so kind and gracious and wanted to spare your feelings," he said. "What kind of lover does that? Sits around waiting for you to realize that you're hurting them, instead of having the courage and honesty to speak up about it?"

"Courage and honesty." Potter's eyes had gone cold, so cold, but at least he had lowered his wand and didn't seem inclined to Apparate anywhere. "You would recognize those virtues if you woke up in bed next to them?"

"You're very sex-focused," Draco said calmly. "But considering the string of unfortunate people who told you that you were no good, I can understand."

Potter's fury choked him, and Draco rolled ahead into the gap. "Someone who expects you to read their minds doesn't tell you the truth, Potter. Someone who wants to sulk and flounce and be attended to and use their pain, when they do reveal it, to guilt you into doing things for them, doesn't tell the truth. Because why wouldn't they speak up earlier, if you were hurting them so badly that it'll scar them forever?"

"I don't think I scarred them," Potter whispered, and this time his eyes were looking into some sort of private hell, from the expression in them. "I think all the bruises and marks I left healed."

"_Emotionally_," Draco said. "Merlin, Potter. Does that aspect of sexual involvement even exist for you anymore?"

* * *

This time, the fire burned through the memories, the things that Harry wanted to atone for and explain and leave unsaid all at the same time. He still thought he should warn Malfoy. If he knew everything, or more likely if Harry could explain the truth in such a way that Malfoy would know what Veronica and Frank and the rest had experienced, then he would walk in the opposite direction thanking magic for his good fortune.

But what Malfoy had said…

"That's what I _want_," Harry snapped. "Everything I want. What I wanted was someone who would share my life with me, far more than I wanted a bed partner." He closed his eyes so that he wouldn't strike out, because he knew his magic was so near the surface that it was a real possibility. "What kind of inhuman monster do you think I am, that I don't want that?" he whispered.

Something changed in the air near him, and Harry opened his eyes to see that Malfoy was right in front of him. When had _that _happened? Harry raised his hands, intending to bat Malfoy away or make a barrier, and Malfoy seized his wrists and wrenched them down. Harry yanked again, remembering the way Malfoy had touched his hands this morning, and not wanting a repeat of that. The Blood Quill scar on the back of his right hand still burned and stung where Malfoy had kissed it.

"I think that you're someone who's _trying _to be an inhuman monster," Malfoy whispered to him, his voice as near as his kisses had been, nearer than his hands. Harry tried to pull free again, but he was hampered by the narrow confines of the alley and the stronger hold Malfoy had on him than he had on Malfoy and, all right, by the warm weakness creeping through him that said merely being held again was a wonderful thing, no matter the circumstances. But then, that was the sort of weakness Harry had always known he was prone to, the same kind that made him long for a partner when he had already learned that he was too dangerous for one. "Someone who wants to deny every connection that someone could have with him, who wants to deny his lover the right to even _touch _him."

Harry pulled again, and this time his wrists popped free. He retreated, and found stone against his back. Malfoy was walking towards him again, mouth set in a sour expression.

_That _strengthened Harry, practically threw the strength into his back and legs, because it was familiar. He straightened up and shook his head at Malfoy. "I'm not your duty," he told him quietly. "You don't owe me anything. You don't have to kiss and touch me because you think you do."

"You _prick_," Malfoy said, his voice lowering to a level that Harry was automatically sure meant danger. "_You _owe _me_."

And that was familiar again, the concept of debts, although with most of the ones he had hurt, they were debts that Harry knew he could never repay. He nodded shortly. "Fine. What do you need?"

"To touch you," Malfoy said, and did it again, sliding his hand along Harry's collarbone as though he wanted to trace it down and under his shirt. Harry shied. Malfoy's hand was too close to several of his scars, including a few of the ones that had made Karl close his eyes, and Karl was the kindest lover Harry had ever had. "To teach you. Of course, I can't do that without you wanting me to do it. But you owe me a chance." And he stood there, staring into Harry's eyes and making Harry feel that he had nowhere to run.

Which was ridiculous, of course. He still had his wand in hand, and there were no wards that would prevent Apparition here.

But still part of Harry whimpered and flinched away, and it took him forever to set his teeth and say, "Fine. _One_ lesson. And after that, don't blame me if you never want to come back again." No one did, he knew. Malfoy was already strange in that he wanted to try kissing again. But a second trial ought to convince him.

Malfoy said nothing. Harry opened his eyes, wondering if he had convinced the git with those last words, or, more likely, if he had simply wanted to press until Harry's will cracked and then leave.

Malfoy was giving him a big smile with all the trimmings instead. "Fine," he said, and took Harry's hand. "_Now _are you going to invite me home?"

* * *

Draco looked around the door that Potter led him in through and raised his eyebrows. There was nothing of the quiet elegance he had almost expected, given the way that Potter had reacted to the luxury of the Sapphire Rose, as though he didn't see it every day but didn't think it was anything unusual, either.

The place was decorated well enough, in gentle, simple colors, and there was a large table for eating and comfortable chairs and a fireplace with patterned stone above and around it that Draco had to admit would be nice to watch when shadows were playing over it in the evening and you were sitting in front of the fire with your eyes almost closed. But nothing that echoed his house, nothing that compared to what _he _could give Potter.

"Let's get this over with."

Draco started and turned. Potter was standing in the kitchen, his arms folded and his stare so intense that Draco nearly lifted his hand to his face to feel if it was flaking the skin off. Instead, he forced his hands to remain at his sides and gave Potter the most neutral smile he could imagine.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I promised you one lesson, and you promised me a lesson in kissing." Potter took a step towards him. But Draco was watching his eyes instead of his body, and saw the way they almost closed, lashes fluttering defensively. "Would you rather do it here, or in the kitchen, or in the bedroom?" He lowered his voice on the last word, but for once, Draco didn't think it was an attempt at seduction.

"Here," Draco said, and sank down on the one couch in front of the fire, his hands spreading out along the back. "Come here, and take off your glasses."

Potter swallowed, so loudly that Draco expected to hear someone complain from the street, and took off his glasses. His eyes dominated his face without them, overwhelming. Even though Draco could see the lightning bolt scar half-peeking from beneath Potter's fringe, it was no longer the most important thing about him.

Draco raised his hand and curved it, beckoning without words this time. Potter came towards him, steps as heavy as an elephant's.

"What is it?" Draco whispered, sliding his hand beneath Potter's chin when Potter knelt down in front of him.

"You'll let me know in a _second_," Potter mumbled to him. "You said you despised them because they didn't let me know what they were thinking. You'll let me know the second you're in pain? You'll pull back?"

Draco bit his lip, savagely, and Potter stirred in front of him like a gazelle. Draco had to calm himself down and nod. "I'll tell you."

"Good," Potter said, and his smile was so bright that Draco leaned in. Potter almost immediately tried to jab his head forwards, and Draco caught his chin again and pulled back.

"First lesson," he said. "You don't have to kiss like a bird pecking at a biscuit. Go nice, and slow." He paused and thought about that, because Potter was looking at him with the kind of weary patience that said he'd heard those lines before. "Better yet, why don't you hold still and let me touch you?"

A quiver ran through Potter like a nervous spasm. Draco knew why, one point of understanding in a blank of confusion. Potter wanted to touch people, not be touched. He didn't want to do anything but give people something and then retreat.

"This is what I want," Draco said, using the voice that he used to make his Potions apprentices leap to their duties. "And you agreed you owed me this much."

Potter nodded, and then held still. His hands rested on his knees, quivering, but then fell quiet. Draco thought about hauling Potter onto the couch with him, so he would be more comfortable, but he was reluctant to make him move just after he'd asked him to be still.

So Draco leaned in and kissed him instead.

Potter kept his mouth motionless, his head motionless. Draco turned his own head gently back and forth, doing nothing but slide his lips over Potter's. Potter was making muffled gasps deep in his throat. Draco didn't know exactly what for. He thought it was going well enough so far. Potter's mouth was as dry and gentle as anyone else's from the outside, which ought to go part of the way to disrupting his notion that he was inherently bad at sex.

"Good," Draco whispered when he pulled back. "Now, I want you to open your mouth and _only move your tongue. _Nothing else. Not even your lips. And I want you to move it slowly, rather than quickly. Can you do that?"

Potter's eyes flicked open, then shut again. It was as though he was too overwhelmed by what he was doing to look, but also as though he thought it would go away if he looked. He hummed once.

"Good," Draco whispered again, and then opened his own mouth.

Their tongues slid together, so slow and smooth that Draco was afraid for a moment it was choking Potter. But no, it wasn't. Only slow, only smooth, and when Potter tensed and then acted as if he would flick his tongue down Draco's throat after all, Draco pulled back, just as slow, just as smooth, and making it clear that it was all his idea, not because he was tired or rattled or hurt.

"Just depend on me," he said. "Can you do that? I'll tell you when I want you to move it faster, kiss me deeper. Think of it as another way of serving my pleasure," he added, when Potter hesitated. "That _is _what you want, isn't it?"

* * *

_He makes it sound like something dirty._

But Harry had come this far, and he had given Malfoy what he felt he was owed, and once this was done, he didn't have to see the git ever again, if he didn't want to.

And he had to admit, he had _missed _kissing. He knew it was horrible, but he had wanted to hold another person the way Malfoy was holding him now, kiss another person with the slow sweetness that Malfoy was kissing him.

Except it was never slow enough, and the sweetness was all in Harry's head.

Harry stiffened up and started to move back, but Malfoy immediately caught his cheeks again, pressing in enough that the touch was painful. "I'll tell you," he said, not angry but intense, eyes a few centimeters away from Harry's. "All right?"

Harry swallowed, once, although his throat was so constricted that it didn't feel like it went all the way down. Then he nodded.

This wasn't what he was made for, not the kind of happiness he was meant to have. But there was that weakness again, and when he was with Malfoy, he could _pretend _for a little while. That made it hard to refuse.

Malfoy kissed him again, and slid his tongue so gently down Harry's teeth that it was like it wasn't there at all—until he suddenly pressed it forcefully into Harry's own tongue, and hissed something between his teeth. Harry couldn't understand it very well, given how occupied Malfoy's mouth was with kissing rather than speaking, but he knew what it meant.

Hesitantly, expecting every moment to hear another hiss that meant pain, he eased his tongue into Malfoy's mouth, down over his front teeth, along his gums. It was slick and wet and _burning_, and Harry wanted to go faster.

But he held still, held steady, even though he was shaking, a fine trembling that had invaded his limbs and made him kneel there swaying back and forth. His head was steady, though. It had to be, as tightly as Malfoy's hands were clasping him.

And then Malfoy's tongue swept down and gently captured his, and Harry let his eyes fall shut with relief as he realized that this was probably the first time he had ever kissed someone and not hurt them. He let Malfoy guide, let him lead, and this time the wetness was _good_, was adding to the slickness and the friction and the desire between their mouths. Harry was hard.

Luckily, he was good at ignoring that.

Malfoy pulled back at last, his eyes thoughtful and his hand caressing Harry's cheek for a second before drifting away. Harry bowed his head and sucked in a breath that went deep enough to hurt.

"All right," he whispered. "That wasn't horrible."

"No," Malfoy said in a considering way. "But not nearly as good as I know it could have been, either. I'll see you tomorrow," he added, sauntering towards the door.

"The fuck?" Harry asked blankly, tottering to his feet. The second-to-last sentence Malfoy had said had made every muscle in his body contract, because it was so much the sort of thing Veronica and the others would say before they walked out the door. But the last sentence contradicted _everything_. "I told you, _one _lesson. That's it."

"And it felt good, didn't it?" Malfoy turned just his head back over his shoulder, the challenge as fierce and free as fire in his eyes.

Harry felt something in himself crumble as he stared at Malfoy. He knew he would say things if he stayed here that he shouldn't say to anybody, not because they would hurt Malfoy but because they would betray others.

"That doesn't _matter_," he said, and stomped into his bedroom, and slammed the door. He forced himself to stand there until he heard the sound of Malfoy walking out. That was all he did. He didn't take anything, or brand anything to show he'd been there, or leave the door to Harry's flat open to show that he was free to come and go as he pleased.

But by then, Harry knew how stupid his own earlier thoughts had been. He wasn't going to be free of Malfoy. Malfoy would come _back_, and probably attempt to get Harry to the point where they would fuck.

And then it would all go downhill. Because no matter how good Malfoy might be at teaching Harry to kiss, he couldn't change the fact that Harry had all but _raped _people in the past. That was the deepest guilt of all, that Harry hadn't known how badly they didn't want it when he was inside them. How could someone not know _that_?

And fuck what Malfoy had said about Harry patronizing people and thinking he knew them better than they knew themselves. This wasn't about protecting Malfoy. It was about protecting _himself. _Harry already had all the guilt he could handle; he didn't need more eating like acid into his soul.

So he leaned against the door and began to plan. He wouldn't hurt Malfoy deliberately, not with his fists and not with his magic and not even with his words or his tongue.

But there were other reasons that Veronica and all the rest had left him, reasons that had nothing to do with what he looked like or how poorly he fucked. And Harry already knew that Malfoy valued the emotional side of things. When he showed Malfoy how damaged he was there, how much care he would need if Malfoy ever intended to become his permanent lover, Malfoy would back off.

And Harry knew _just how_ to convince him of that, too.

He lifted his head and smiled at the far wall where a mirror had once hung. Harry had taken it down once he no longer needed it to see his reflection, when other people's eyes became enough for him.

"Still the game to me, Malfoy," he whispered.


	6. Determination

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Determination_

Draco lounged on the couch in front of his fireplace, his hum so faint and distant that he wouldn't have known he was humming at all if he didn't know himself. That he hummed in contentment was one of those things not many people recognized about him. His Slytherin friends probably wouldn't have thought to betray the secret to anyone else, because they wouldn't think it important enough to be a secret, and his lovers had rarely been around him when he was like this.

_Now, one of them will be._

Draco extended his hand lazily towards the fire. The firelight played on the delicate bones of his wrist, making them glow and gleam with an artistic precision that Draco admired. He wondered when Potter would learn to admire them that way, would learn to look at other parts of Draco's body than his cock.

_It might take a while. But he will achieve it in the end. I will not yield until he can do it._

A sound startled him out of his trance. He turned around and saw a house-elf popping into the room, bowing deeply. On the elf's hand sat a brown post-owl, stirring and flapping as though its flight hadn't worn the restlessness from its wings.

"That will be all, Oddly," Draco murmured, studying the owl in the meantime, to make sure that he didn't recognize it. He didn't think so. None of his friends would use an owl like this, not when they had standards to maintain, and Draco knew the birds of most of his casual correspondents, including other Potions masters. It was probably a communication from a client who didn't want to be recognized.

Draco sighed as his elf disappeared and the owl soared across the space to him, landing on the couch arm. The commission would probably be for a love potion. Draco accepted such things for the money and the chance to keep one set of skills in practice, but he resented the damp letters and the eager, wobbly words and the coy circumlocutions and the repetitive motions of cutting and dicing for this particular potion. Perhaps he wouldn't take this one on. He had Potter in hand now.

But the letter turned out not to have a seal, and the owl took off the minute Draco removed it from its leg, not waiting for a response. Draco blinked after it, then opened the envelope.

The writing inside slanted to the left in a strange way, and made Draco think of someone not writing with their dominant hand. He knew he didn't recognize it, even when he twisted the paper and tried to make up for the strangeness by examining it from another angle. Both paper and ink were utterly common, not distinctive in any way.

And in the meantime, while he tried to figure out who had written it, Draco couldn't help reading what it said.

_Dear Draco,_

_I know that you have worries and fears aplenty, and one of them is probably trying to sort out the truth that surrounds Harry Potter. You'll have heard so many rumors that trusting any one of them, unless you hear confirmation from his mouth or one of his lovers', is a foolish mistake. And I don't think you a fool._

_I do think you more than a little infatuated, more than a little in love, and as the kin of someone who had their heart broken by him, I want to tell you something about Harry Potter._

_You might have heard that he has nightmares that put some of his lovers off. That is the absolute truth; take it from someone who's slept beside him. Or rather, from me, who heard the truth in heart-broken sobs from someone who's slept beside him._

_The content of those nightmares, though, might surprise you. He doesn't always dream of the war and his confrontation with You-Know-Who, or his friends who died in that war. Instead, he also dreams of his childhood, when he lived with Muggles._

_The Muggles were members of his mother's family, her sister and that sister's husband and son. They didn't know magic, they didn't like magic, and they didn't want Potter to grow up knowing it. They made sure that he was forbidden to say the word magic, and although sometimes he did things that he couldn't explain, they didn't tell him of his heritage. He was the smallest and skinniest child in his primary school, without friends._

_He came into the wizarding world having learned about magic and his parents' deaths only a month before. He seized the first friends that came to him, and never attempted to make any others. You would know about that yourself, having been on the sharp end of his refusal to see the world in other than black and white terms._

_And he never grew beyond that, beyond being ignored and abandoned to magic by the Muggles. He spent all his time during the summers daydreaming of the wizarding world and escaping to it. But when you treat magic like a daydream, then you tend to see only the good aspects of it and forget about the bad ones. Worse, you start acting as though it's a disappointment when wizards are people, too, and not perfectly helpful to you all the time._

_That's the problem with the relationships that Potter tries to have with wizards. He can never see them whole, only in partial flashes. He's in love with them at first, and then grows disgusted with them as time goes on. Safe yourself from being impaled by his expectations, and get away as soon as you can._

_I see no reason to sign myself as anything but: _

_A friend._

Draco put the letter down and stared at it. Then he waved his wand, concentrating, and a copy of it appeared next to the original, a simple charm he had first learned when studying Potions recipes. He put the copy aside on the table next to the couch.

Then he ripped up the original with long, deliberate motions, watching the pieces of parchment as they landed on the carpet around him. Oddly appeared to clean them up with a squeak of dismay, but Draco snarled at him, and he vanished without touching them.

Draco lay there with eyes narrowed, watching the snowdrift. He had the feeling that he knew who had written that particular letter.

And he did not _appreciate it._

* * *

"How are you?"

Harry managed to put down his report and smile up at Hermione. "Wow, this must be serious," he teased her gently. "Given that not just Ron but _you _show up to give me significant glances this morning."

Hermione didn't smile, but leaned over and peered earnestly into his eyes instead. "Ron told me a little bit about what you and Malfoy said to one another yesterday," she murmured. "I want to know _how you are_."

"And what you want in that mood, you get," Harry muttered. He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his ears, rubbed his mouth, and only gave in when he noticed Hermione's foot tapping and knew there was nothing more he could rub without being disgusting. "I'm all right. I went home and ran. Then Malfoy showed up, and we talked." He had thought about hiding that, but Malfoy would be coming back at least once—Harry didn't think the letter he'd written to him would be enough to put him off forever—and his friends deserved to know what they had talked about.

"How did he find you?" Hermione had perked up, and Harry wasn't sure whether it was the evidence that someone cared about Harry or the chance to learn about unknown magic.

"You know, I'm not sure." Harry frowned as he realized he hadn't asked Malfoy, but decided he could forgive himself. He'd bloody well been distracted at the time. "Some kind of locater charm, I imagine. It had to be sophisticated. He Apparated right to me."

"It's not important." Hermione leaned forwards again, enough to endanger her perch on his desk. "And what did you talk about?"

Harry scowled slightly. This _would _show up, of course. But Ron was watching from the other side, his wand still in his hand even though he had finally finished casting the Privacy Charms, and Harry couldn't escape the intent gaze of his two best friends.

Nor would he really want to. These were the only people in his life who loved and understood him, Harry had accepted. The Weasleys, minus maybe Ginny, whose life he had destroyed, loved him, but they didn't know about all the horrible things he had done, the way Ron and Hermione did.

"We talked about the reasons I shouldn't date him," Harry said, his voice clipped. "He didn't accept any of it. I took him back home, and told him I would allow him _one _chance to show me what I was missing by not accepting him as a lover."

Ron gagged a little, and Hermione glared at him. Ron sighed and shook his head. "Just—I'll listen to the details if I have to," he said. "And it's not even that it's you, mate, it's that it's _Malfoy_."

Harry nodded, smiling. He had no doubt of that, since Ron had managed to listen to the details of Harry's other confessions, when he really had to, without flinching. "He tried to teach me how to kiss," Harry said. "It went all right, I suppose." Not even to his best friends would he confess that a simple kiss got him hard. It just showed how starved he was for contact with wizards and other things he couldn't have. "But he wants to come back, and I can't allow him to do that."

"Why not, if he wants to?" Hermione sounded breathless. Harry met her eyes, and sighed.

"I don't have a hero, Hermione," he told her quietly. "There's not someone out there destined to save everyone. I thought you'd accepted that, when it came to me."

"But there might be someone who wants to try," Ron added, unexpectedly enough that Harry turned to face him. "And I told you before that you were patronizing Malfoy by thinking you know what he wants, mate. What if he wants to be your hero? Can you really justify stopping him?"

Harry wanted to put his head between his hands and hold it there. Or, better, he wanted some way to project his thoughts directly into his friends' minds and let them see what he saw, imagine what he did, feel what he felt.

But no wizards had invented magic that would help with that, not even Pensieve memories. He had to do what ordinary people all over the world did, just try to explain and hope they understood him.

"It probably doesn't matter," he said, looking up. "Not that I understand why Malfoy would want that in the first place, not that I understand why he's trying so hard to teach me how to kiss, but _anyway_. I already sent him a letter that explained some things about me that he didn't know. That'll scare him off."

Hermione sounded breathless for a different reason this time, Harry was sure. "You did _what? _What did it say?"

"It tells him about the Dursleys." Harry had done harder things than meeting Hermione's gaze evenly, he was sure. It was just hard to remember them right now. "About my nightmares and the way I grew up without even knowing about magic. I don't think he'll want to be with someone emotionally as well as physically scarred."

"If he's spoken with you about the things you say you discussed, he couldn't have missed the emotional scars," Hermione whispered. "I don't know why he's pursuing you so hard, either, but you think that letter is going to put him off?"

"He doesn't know I sent it," Harry said, and winced and blushed and wished that he could turn away when Hermione's eyes drilled him. "It's—Hermione, I _need _to do this. It's my life. I get to make the decisions."

"I know," Hermione said, and closed her eyes, and drummed her palm for a second on the side of the desk before she straightened up and gave him a sweet, short smile. "I remind myself of that all the time. Even when I think that you're making bad decisions."

Harry grinned back. "Thanks. And remind me never to tell you what I think of the decorating scheme in your drawing room."

"Potter."

_Jesus Christ, Malfoy, pick a better time and place. _Harry could already sense heads turning just because of the conjunction between that voice and his name. Hadn't Malfoy already learned the lesson about confronting Harry at work and the audience they'd attract?

Or maybe he didn't care, because that would make him more likely to get what he wanted. Harry didn't care about the reasoning, and he turned around, his own hands braced flat on the desk, his mind already bounding.

Malfoy was clutching a sheet of parchment in one hand. It didn't look like the letter that Harry had sent, but Harry couldn't see the writing on it, either, so he didn't jump to conclusions. The look like white steel on Malfoy's face was what he had to concentrate on.

"You wanted something, Malfoy?" he asked, stepping outside the Privacy Charms Ron had cast and raising his voice. He was going to be in control of the confrontation this time, he promised himself. If Malfoy started talking about something that shouldn't be talked about, Harry would raise the charms at once. If Malfoy _dared _to accuse him of something, Harry would spread a bit of vicious gossip concerning Malfoy's skills in bed. He didn't deserve to be hunted and hounded like this. Malfoy was a lover that Harry hadn't hurt by kissing or fucking the way he had the others; he had never promised Malfoy a lifetime together or an exclusive commitment. Harry had a perfect right to stand up to him.

Which didn't mean that part of him didn't quail when Malfoy marched up and stood there in front of him, swaying on his heels with the force of his emotions. But he kept that weak part locked away, and met Malfoy's eyes with a faint smile.

"What do you want?" he repeated, when a few seconds had passed and Malfoy hadn't launched into the tirade that his expression promised. Harry could feel the general breathless silence gathered around them, off to the sides, and wanted to disappoint it. Still, it was odd that Malfoy would think about disappointing it, too, when he had marched up to Harry at work in the first place.

"I want you to come to my office with me," Malfoy said, and lowered his voice in a careful emphasis that fooled neither of them, and probably didn't fool Ron or Hermione, either, but might the gossipmongers. "That potion we discussed? We have to discuss it some more."

Harry smiled pleasantly. All right. They would have the argument in private. That was at least more considerate than Malfoy had been last time. "Very well," he said, and tipped a wink at Hermione and Ron as he followed Malfoy down the corridor to the Potions Division.

Ron shook his head at him. Hermione held up a clenched fist in response. Harry snorted. He supposed that could either be encouragement or Hermione telling him not to be stupid.

He didn't know, so he chose to turn his back on it and walk along with Malfoy, instead.

* * *

The fury that had roared inside Draco from the moment of receiving that letter had picked up to a single, steady flame ever since he realized Potter was walking beside him entirely unaffected by it. That he hadn't glanced twice at the letter in Draco's hand, that he showed no apprehension in coming with him, that he hadn't mouthed an apology when he caught Draco's eye.

_He thinks he did nothing wrong in writing the bloody thing._

Or, worse, he thought he had fooled Draco with his stupid pretense of anonymity, and expected Draco to believe it.

Draco smiled. He thought that Potter would quail a bit if he caught sight of that smile, but Potter kept his gaze straight ahead. One of the apprentices who had ruined a Draught of Living Death yesterday did see the smile, squeaked, and ran past Draco with his head bowed as though he was a mouse escaping from a hawk.

_Keep walking, _Draco thought, and the thought made the muscles in his legs clench so that he walked harder and faster. He could do nothing until he and Potter were in private. He had learned that much, after yesterday's disaster.

Potter showed no hesitation about stepping into his office. Draco locked the door audibly and stepped up beside him.

Potter still didn't turn around. "You have more room than I realized on the last visit here," he said, looking at Draco's desk with approval. "Suited to your importance as the Head of the Division. I like it."

Draco laid a hand on Potter's shoulder. It shook, a little, and he held it there until it stopped shaking. Potter did nothing but turn and look at him, his eyes so calm that Draco wanted to rake them out.

But he was the one who was at a disadvantage in this contest if he was angry. He made himself lean forwards and speak into Potter's face instead of striking him. "I can't believe you thought that would fool me."

Potter blinked. "You think I'm lying about my regard for your office? But it's very nice."

Draco held up the letter. "You wrote this," he said. "You pretended to be some idiot concerned for my welfare if I got involved with you. And it's not going to work, Potter. I know all about your emotional damage. I have comparable damage of my own. It hasn't stopped me from being successful and dating people, and it won't stop _you_, either."

* * *

_Shit._

Harry hadn't thought Malfoy would figure it out, not this fast. Where was the recoiling? If anything, it was more likely with Malfoy than with someone like Veronica, who was less fastidious, or with Frank, who was Muggleborn. Malfoy should have higher standards. The least hint of dirt or taint should make him turn away with his lip curled and disgust in his eyes.

But he hadn't. That meant it was up to Harry to deal with what he had found here. He straightened his shoulders, rolling them, and went on the attack.

"Why do you care?" he demanded. "You could find ninety percent of the wizarding population with less stubbornness and determination to drive you away. What does it matter to you who I date? How I kiss? Whether I have emotional damage or not?"

Malfoy fell back a step, and Harry pressed the attack, walking right up to him and sneering in his face. "I _asked _you a question," he whispered. "You haven't answered it yet. Yes, you can talk all you like about how I have a sense of humor and defended you against Greengrass, but you didn't know that I would do that when you started pursuing me. So, tell me. _What the fuck _does it matter to you where I go or what I do?"

Malfoy reached up and caught his wrists. Harry could have thrown him off with any of half a dozen moves, tossed him to the floor or wrenched free.

He stayed still, though, because Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open in what looked like a pant and his eyes glazed. Harry wondered what the hell that meant. Had Malfoy been cursed with a lust hex? It would at least explain some things.

Not the gentleness with which he had handled Harry's face and mouth when he was teaching him how to kiss, though. Lust hexes made the victim think about nothing but getting the other person naked.

"I've wanted to be acknowledged by you for a long time," Malfoy whispered. "Not a nod when we pass in the corridors, not the kind of absent smile that I know you give to everybody who doesn't actually publish scandalous articles about you. I wanted to be _important_."

Harry sighed and closed his eyes. "Yes, Ginny had a bad case of that, too," he muttered. "But she was my friend, as well as my lover, and when she realized that I couldn't be what she wanted, she was able to give it up. Do you think you can give it up, too, Malfoy?" He winced when he heard the sound of his own voice, but he told himself he was pleading for Malfoy's sake and not his own. He only hoped the great git would listen.

"Why should I?" Malfoy's grip really was crushing, and Harry shifted in his hold, as a gentle hint that he would rather Malfoy let him go. Malfoy really should no inclination to do so, which Harry thought was irritating. "I have you right here, and you've sucked me off, and I want more from you."

Harry sighed again. "That blowjob was a mistake, wasn't it? I should have refused you when you first came up and asked me for a date."

Malfoy shook him. Harry let his head flop back and forth on his neck, not trying to resist. A kind of heavy pity was moving through his throat, coming near to choking him, dampening his eyes. He always felt sorry for the people who wanted to come close and warm themselves by the fire of his fame. Harry had nothing to give them, no way to make them famous, too, which was what they really wanted, and no way to make them feel like the center of his attention.

Frank had explained that, although Harry hadn't given his words the importance they deserved at the time. That was early in their relationship, when Harry was deliriously happy and thought he was making Frank that way, too.

_I know that you can't make them heroes, _Frank had said, leaning forwards over the table and rapping his fingers against Harry's plate to get his attention. They were in a restaurant to celebrate their six-month anniversary, and Harry had preferred to dreamily gaze at Frank's face rather than listen to his words. _But that doesn't mean you can't give them your attention, and they can get at reflected glory that way._

That had been Frank's way of saying that he didn't feel Harry was giving _him _enough attention, that he wanted to ensure he held the center place in Harry's meditations and not just a peripheral one. But Harry hadn't known that at the time. He'd had some feeble argument about how he couldn't pay attention to everyone who crossed his path.

Frank had leaned back, arms folded in the way that Harry had learned to dread. _I know that. But you have the duty and the responsibility to try. To make them feel, for just a second, what it's like to be close to greatness. _

But that had been flawed, too, in its own way, Harry thought. Frank hadn't known yet that Harry didn't have a heart that could encompass someone else, or a brain that really wanted to make other people happy. Once he knew, then he had told Harry the truth and left.

"Are you fucking _listening _to me?"

Harry focused his eyes again. Malfoy had a simple hold on his shoulders now, instead of the crushing one that he'd had before, and he was staring into Harry's face as though he really thought Harry would faint or something. Harry shook his head and clasped Malfoy's hands for a second before moving away.

"No," he said. "Not right now. Is there a way that you can explain to me, in simple words, what you want? And then I can tell you why I can't give it to you, and maybe you'll finally believe me and let me go."

* * *

_He was somewhere else. And that he never noticed I was shaking him, that he didn't react with any signs of pain…_

Draco felt his breath coming short, his eyes squinting as though to deny himself light. He swallowed and stepped away, pacing to his desk to stir his papers with one hand.

"Don't do that," Potter murmured from behind him. "You'll mess your paperwork up." He came up beside Draco and began to arrange things into neat piles, sorting and stacking the edges.

Draco turned and stared at him. "If I'm the one who messes it up, I'm the one who knows where to find things."

Potter glanced at him sideways, and then sighed and faced Draco fully, setting down the latest pile of paperwork he had when Draco gestured at him. "Look. You want more from me. I get that. But I've told you again and again, in all the ways and words I know, that I don't have more to give. So you must have something else you want to say, something you think you haven't told me about yet. It's not going to be anything I haven't heard before, but I need to know what it is, so I know how to answer you."

"You _arrogant _bastard," Draco said, a little stunned.

Potter sighed and looked at the door. "If you understood how many of these conversations I've been through," he muttered, "from people who thought they wanted to date me, and all the people I see in clubs who ask if they can see me again, and even the wizards I _did _date, then you would understand." He glanced back at Draco, his eyes so weary that they hurt Draco. "I've had a lot more conversations in my head than aloud, even. I know all the ways this can play out, and all the ways I can hurt someone. I've hurt you already. I apologize for the letter. I did think it would make you back off, though, and that was all I really wanted at the time."

Draco licked his lips. He had to find something to say, or Potter would think it was all right to discard Draco and go about his business. It was going to be a bit hard, however.

But only a bit.

He leaned forwards, holding Potter's eyes, and firming his gaze when Potter only stood there as if he had no idea what Draco might want to discuss. "I want you to _be _with me. In body and spirit. To let me give you more lessons. To let me give you pleasure."

"And what about this acknowledgment that you mentioned before?" Potter stood as motionless as a heron, and his voice slipped out of his lips softly, word by word. "That you wanted to be important to me?"

"That, too," Draco said. "But the way I want to earn that importance is by making myself someone you can't live without."

Potter blinked at him, then fell back a step as though he assumed that would make Draco let him out the door. Draco just turned his head to track him.

"That isn't going to happen," Potter said. "Do you think that, if there was _anyone _I couldn't live without, I would be like this?"

"I don't know what you mean." Draco was proud that he was able to say that honestly.

"I thought I couldn't live without Frank," Potter said. "He was the one who opened my eyes to what I really was. And I thought I couldn't live without Ginny, at one point, and I even dared to hope for a life where I was never parted from Veronica. But they all made me see that I _could _live without them, that I _had _to live without them, because I was hurting them. They deserved their freedom and their safety more than I deserved someone to spend my life with."

"You want someone to spend your life with," Draco said calmly, ignoring the incredulous buzz in his own veins that he was standing here discussing this sort of thing with Harry Potter. "And I want to make myself important to you. There should be no conflict between us."

Potter took a long, slow step to the right. He was flushed, the color traveling down his face to his neck. Draco found his eyes following it, wondering exactly how low the flush might dip.

"You called me a bastard, and maybe you're right, but I am going to do at least one thing right," Potter said. "The thing I couldn't do right all the times before this, not because I didn't want to, but because I didn't have the eyes to see. I'm going to make sure that you don't hurt yourself."

"I've talked before about how patronizing I find that attitude," Draco said easily, turning to face Potter head-on again. Did Potter hope to make him nervous with all this circling and pacing, as if he was building up to a duel? _Ridiculous. _"Just like I found it patronizing for you to send me that letter."

Potter shook his head. "I already apologized. I won't be doing it again."

"What _exactly _did you hope to accomplish with that?" Draco pressed, ignoring the issue of apologies for now. After all, words weren't what he wanted from Potter. "You know that the personal aspect of our relationship is important to me. You really ought to have known that I would decide I had to learn more about you, not be pushed away."

Potter made a face. "Yes, but you'd want to know more about someone fascinating or interesting. I'm not that."

Draco's eyes darted to the scar on Potter's forehead, because he couldn't help it.

Potter's sigh sounded like a rattling leaf. "You're smarter than that, Malfoy."

"I can't find you fascinating or interesting outside the scar?" Draco cocked his head and moved closer. "But if I did take the scar into account, then you would decide I was shallow and only looking to fuck you based on your fame. Either way, you're protected against having to deal with someone else's genuine lust, aren't you? They're always either fucked-up people you wouldn't want to date anyway, or fools."

Potter's smile was fleeting, but there. "Now you understand."

Draco halted in front of him. "I've never met someone who protected himself as well as you," he murmured.

Potter met his eyes. "You never met someone who had the need, either." When Draco just waited, he added, "Because you never met someone who was as dangerous to other people's mental stability."

Draco snorted. "What, you think you're the only person who ever hurt someone?"

"Who ever hurt so many people, for so long," Potter corrected, and his jaw projected a good distance beyond his face. "I can't control it. I didn't even realize it was happening. I've already hurt you, haven't I, when my only thought was to spare you pain? So you should back off and leave me alone."

_Sophisticated,_ Draco had to acknowledge, _his ability to protect himself. _He could see now why Potter said he was good at imagining the ways conversations would go in his head. He could imagine the course of arguments, too, and he had already thought about objections that someone could make to his plans, and with them, ways to dismiss them.

Draco no longer thought he would get through Potter's barriers by smashing straight ahead. He circled around to the side instead.

"What _exactly _was so horrible about your past that it makes you wake up screaming at night?" he asked. "The war, yes, but everyone knows about that, and other people suffered during it, too."

* * *

Harry straightened up and examined Malfoy again. He stood there, a more slender man than he seemed at first, but with the ability to project so skillful and intimidating an aura that Harry wasn't surprised he had ended up as Head of the Potions Division.

He wondered if he should share the details of his past with Malfoy. He had only used enough in the letter to make it sound simultaneously horrifying and pathetic, which had carved deep scars but which he _should _have got over. Did he really want to expose the truth to Malfoy? It was his to keep.

But the alternative was to have Malfoy coming after him, closer and closer, and getting stung by Harry's stupid actions each and every time.

"Do you have a Pensieve?" he asked.

Malfoy blinked and put a hand on his desk. Harry chuckled despite himself. In a flash, Malfoy was standing strong again, still for a second before he strode across the room and unlocked a cabinet on the far wall.

Harry waited, drawing memories of his past with the Dursleys and his battles with Voldemort to the surface of his mind. He needed certain strong, specific ones, ones that could make his past seem horrible—so horrible that Malfoy wouldn't want to stick around to deal with it. At the same time, he had to avoid provoking pity.

Maybe he didn't have to worry about that, Harry admitted as Malfoy came back with the Pensieve and held it out to him. Malfoy's gaze was bright and steady, and his jaw gave a little tick now and then. He didn't look as though he _did _pity.

Harry closed his eyes and tapped his wand against his temple. He drew out the memories of Ripper chasing him up a tree, his battle with the basilisk, watching Quirrell disintegrate and burn when he touched Harry, a long session in the cupboard without food, and the night Dumbledore had died on the Tower. He might not have tried that last one with someone else, but Harry knew its value as a weapon against Malfoy.

He laid them all in the Pensieve, stirring his wand around a little so that they would separate, but also flow into each other seamlessly, forming a single, dark landscape for Malfoy to walk through. Then he stepped back and stared at him.

"You want me to view these?" Malfoy laid his hand on the edge of the Pensieve, but never took his eyes off Harry.

"I wouldn't have given them to you otherwise," Harry said, and in case there was a misunderstanding lurking in there, added, "Nothing you did could have forced me. Nothing you did could have bribed me."

There was a flash of a smile like winter sunshine on Malfoy's face before he nodded and turned to plunge his head beneath the surface of the memories. Harry picked out the most comfortable of the chairs in the office and settled down to wait.

While Malfoy was busy, a few people knocked on or rattled the handle of the locked door, but Harry reckoned that was Malfoy's problem, and he could take care of it when he came back.

* * *

Draco caught his breath and looked around. He stood in the obsessively neat garden of a small Muggle house. It had to be Muggle, because all the corners looked sharp and the air was too thin—not with height, but with look of magic. Draco could make out other houses that looked the same in the distance, and a cramped, mangy look to all of them.

Draco curled his lip. Just knowing that Potter had grown up here, away from the magnificent expanses that should have been his heritage, explained a lot about him.

"Get him, Ripper!"

Apparently the memory he was here to watch was happening behind him. That often occurred with Pensieves, Draco had discovered, or at least it was his luck with them. He turned around and reoriented himself.

Potter was scrambling across the grass. Draco caught his breath. Potter didn't look much smaller than he'd been the first time Draco saw him, but passing years had dulled the memory and let it have a new impact when Draco saw him like this now. His overlarge clothes flapped around him as if he was going to take off, and his eyes were bright and desperate and _alive. _Draco found himself moving forwards as if he could aid in the chase.

Behind Potter came a dog, squat and low to the ground and far uglier than any Crup Draco had ever laid eyes on, although one heard _stories _about some of the inbreeding lines. Potter leaped up into a tree and caught a branch. The dog, barking as though it was about to go mad, leaped after him. Draco thought he saw the dog scrape a line down Potter's leg with a tooth, but it was difficult to be sure about that.

Then the Muggles came out of the house and laughed at Potter. Draco scanned them dismissively. All large except one of the women, and she clutched her long neck and laughed right along with the others. Draco did take note of how much bigger the boy was than Potter. Potter probably hadn't been the one in charge in this household.

The dog leaped and danced beneath him and barked and yelped, and Potter clung to a tree branch and looked miserable.

Draco raised his eyebrows. So, this memory indicated that Potter's family hadn't treated him well, but Draco would have expected it to give him a disdain of Muggles and a distrust of dogs. What else was Draco here to witness?

The end of the memory, apparently, because it blurred, and then Draco stood in front of a giant, rearing snake that dived straight down at him, fangs aiming for his head.

No amount of chanting _It's only a memory, it's only a memory, _to himself was going to keep him still for that one. Draco dived and rolled, and came up battle-ready on the other side of the enormous underground room.

The basilisk hit where he'd been standing, and Draco turned to see that the fangs had found a target, after all, in the arm of yet another small and scruffy boy with intense eyes. Darker eyes than the boy of the first memory, though, Draco had to admit. He scrambled up and tried to stand in front of the basilisk, but his knees wavered and he fell back.

There was someone else there, too—besides Weasley's sister slumped against the wall where Draco had landed, that was. A darkly handsome boy with wide eyes filled with a sick excitement, who stood with his hands on his hips and began to brag about the ways that he would profit from Potter's death.

Draco found it hard to listen to him. Instead, his gaze was on Potter, and not even the phoenix and the Sorting Hat that circled the room a moment later could distract him.

Potter ignored the probable pain when the Sword of Gryffindor fell on his head, although it was surely bad enough to give him a concussion. Instead, he used the Sword to attack the basilisk. And then he stabbed the basilisk fang through the book that lay at his feet. The spirit of the other boy must have been connected to the book, because he began to shriek and scream and fade, and Potter closed his eyes and drooped for a second before he forced himself back to his feet, stumbling over to Weasley's little sister to check her pulse.

Draco saw the determination and the fury, blazing bright, and shook his head. Even with a phoenix and a Sword to help—and the phoenix had blinded the basilisk, Draco saw, when he could bring himself to look at the snake's face—this was still a remarkable achievement for Potter. And he thought the memory would put Draco _off _from wanting to date or help him? Why had he chosen it?

If anything, it only made Draco's curiosity burn brighter. When and how had that fire gone out of Potter? Why would he be content to live on ashes and blowjobs now, when he'd fought so hard in hopeless situations before?

The memory melted and rolled into another, and Draco frowned as he recognized Professor Quirrell. The purple turban flapping around his head could belong to no one else.

But there was Potter beneath his fingers, and it slowly occurred to Draco that he had never seen Quirrell with the turban _unwrapped_. And then—

Then he turned his back, and Draco made out the face in the back of his head, and he wanted to vomit. He really might have, if he hadn't been in a memory and hadn't known from experience that the vomit would end up all over the Pensieve instead. Not a way that he wanted to distinguish himself.

He retreated a step, and then stared in fascinated horror as Quirrell began to burn. He was shrieking to the Dark Lord, calling him "Master," and many things Draco hadn't understood about the end of his first year at Hogwarts clicked into place. The Dark Lord's hissing voice, worse in some ways than the one Draco had heard when he was alive again, implored Quirrell to keep clutching Potter.

Even though he was burning and disintegrating as he did.

Potter collapsed just as the final death took Quirrell, and then Dumbledore rushed from behind a stone pillar and picked Potter up. Draco curled his lip automatically, but he didn't know how anyone who'd watched the memory was supposed to remove their eyes from that small boy, still with his hand jammed in his pocket. Probably protecting the Philosopher's Stone, which Draco knew, because of guarded words from his father, that the Dark Lord had sought to take at one point.

_So you fought a man and he died when you were very young, _Draco thought, following Dumbledore and Potter to the door of the chamber. _Is that supposed to make me angry? Disdainful? Pitying? _

Maybe that was it, he thought slowly. This memory had happened mostly when Potter was unconscious, and Draco _knew _he hadn't cast the spells that brought about Quirrell's death, although he wasn't exactly sure _how _it had happened. Maybe Potter thought that memories of helplessness would drive Draco away.

_He doesn't know me. _

Draco walked through of the door of the room in which Potter had confronted the Dark Lord and Quirrell, and found himself in another place altogether. A different memory, he decided after glancing around. It had to be. But it was hard to see anything. He appeared to be in a cramped room, with only the faint lines of light around the door to illuminate the interior. Draco settled back against the wall and waited for his eyes to adjust.

Something sniffled in front of him.

Draco leaped and drew his wand before his mind snapped, _Memory, remember? _He lowered the wand again and took in a deep breath.

Either the memory had become clearer on purpose for Draco to see things, or his eyes had finally adjusted, because he made out the boy sitting on the small bed in the middle of the room, head bowed in dejection. Even smaller than the first memory, Draco thought, when he'd been chased by the dog. Potter might be six or seven years old here.

His skin was an unhealthy pale, Draco decided, dropping to one knee to see better. Potter continued to stare dimly past him. His clothes were as big as the ones he'd worn in his flight across the garden, and Draco now thought he knew why. Potter's cousin was considerably bigger than he was, after all.

Still Draco couldn't figure out where they were. This must be Potter's bedroom, but the size and shape and _darkness _of it made no sense. Even if the Muggles regularly locked Potter in a dark place as a punishment, Draco was fairly sure that they didn't build Muggle homes without lights in every room. It was what the pitiful things had to do, since they couldn't bring up light whenever they felt like it.

The door with the lines around it suddenly flew open, and once again Draco jumped to his feet. He resisted drawing his wand, although no one but him would ever know. He had his pride.

The boy on the bed looked as if he did, too, because in the seconds before the thin Muggle woman thrust her head into the room, he scrubbed frantically at his face to remove tear-tracks and sat up straight and tall.

"Get out, boy," the woman said, her voice like the whine of a hungry dragon hatchling to Draco's ears. "I want the breakfast _cooked_. I want Dudley's bedrooms _cleaned. _And then I want you to get down here and back into your cupboard before anyone else sees you, understand? Mrs. Pruitt is coming over to visit today, and you're not to let her see you."

"Yes, Aunt Petunia," said Potter dismally, and unfolded his legs. The woman had slammed the door again before he got all the way down, but he opened it without pausing to complain and went out after her.

Draco blinked as it swung shut again. Yes, a cupboard, perhaps in an awkward place somewhere in a Muggle home, such as under the stairs. That would make sense.

That Potter had to _live _in it, of course, didn't make sense. But Draco was able to understand more of what he said, now, about being too damaged to live with.

Not that Draco should have to let Potter make the decision about what he was willing to put up with.

He stood up, with a smile that felt rough on the muscles in his face, and opened the cupboard door, reckoning the next memory waited beyond it.

It did indeed. The second he stepped out of the door and onto the top of the Astronomy Tower, Draco saw his own ashen face and the even more ashen one of the old man he confronted, and knew exactly what he would see here.

_Cruel, Potter. That was cruel._

But that was the point, wasn't it? Potter wasn't showing Draco these memories for his health. He was trying to make Draco leave him alone. And it made perfect sense, from that direction, that he would choose these memories.

Draco grimaced and stepped forwards. He had little choice but to watch the memory play out. He thought he could make out a shimmer off to the side, indicating a Potter hidden under an Invisibility Cloak. It was the only way he could have had this memory and not interfered, Draco reckoned. Otherwise, it wouldn't be _his _memory. It would be Draco's, and they would be having some words about prying into other people's heads without permission.

He had wondered where the determination to beat the odds and defy the rules that he'd seen in the younger Potter had gone. He thought he knew now. It had all gone into his barriers, his desire to protect himself. He had built them and laid them so wide and strong that everything became fodder for them. His memories. His desires.

People trying to help him.

Draco had no intention of becoming masonry.

He listened and watched in silence as the memory proceeded, but he had thought that it would not end with Potter rushing out of hiding to change something, and he was right. It ended with Dumbledore falling over the wall of the Tower, and then Professor Snape and Draco taking off.

Then the blackness took form around Draco, and he rose from the Pensieve quiet and utterly steadfast.

_He might think that he can get rid of me the same way he can everyone else. But it's time for him to learn that I'm not everyone else._

* * *

Harry looked up. Malfoy had been bent over the Pensieve for so long, Harry had begun to wonder if something had gone wrong with the memories, or with Malfoy's brain. But then he was shaking the silvery drops from his hair, picking through the strands to remove the last bits. Harry came forwards to reclaim his memories, keeping his eyes on Malfoy the whole time.

He didn't look up, wouldn't look up. Harry had to admit that he felt a little stab of disappointment. Was Malfoy reluctant to face him and show him the pity in his eyes? Assuming that Harry's memories had managed to inspire that emotion.

Then he lifted his head and turned to face Harry, and Harry's wand nearly dropped from his hand.

Malfoy's eyes were grey and unyielding. But not with the disgust that was one emotion Harry had imagined him taking away from this.

"How dare you show me that last memory," Malfoy whispered. "How dare you try to manipulate me."

Harry couldn't help laughing, though he had to admit that the laugh was as dry as flint. "You thought I was above that when I wrote you that letter? I already _admitted _that I wrote you the letter. The wonder is that you continue to act as though I'm the shining Gryffindor hero that they always thought I was."

"You're not a hero," Malfoy said. "But I would expect most people to be above that."

"You manipulated people all the time," Harry pointed out. The anger in the center of his chest was unexpected, but welcome, and much better than the anxiety that might have been there instead. "You laughed in their faces while you did it. Hell, you did it to me, to try and make me admit things to you that I didn't want to admit, and so that you could teach me to _kiss." _He wanted to laugh more and more as he thought about how hypocritical it was of Malfoy to act like manipulation was a crime. Probably he only thought of it that way when it happened to _him_. "I'm your match, if you like. Not worse. And if you do think I am, that's all the more reason for you to back away."

Malfoy watched him, unflinching. That was the best word Harry could think of to describe him right now. And it was a frustrating one. It seemed that no matter what Harry did, Malfoy would continue to avoid what was only for his _own good _and try to hammer his way in through Harry's barriers.

If he did…

It hurt Harry, to think how much Malfoy would hurt in return.

"You have every reason to think that I'm not worthy of your help," he said, making one last effort and trying to speak with everything in him, everything that Ron and Hermione, and maybe Malfoy too, would say was kind and decent. "And the final clincher, at least I hope so, should be that I don't _want _it. Maybe I could be capable of a good relationship again if I worked with Mind-Healers for years and let you teach me. But every Mind-Healer I've talked to tried to betray me or failed to understand me sooner or later, and I don't want to go through the pain of your teaching. That's only from my side, all right, with nothing about what it would do to you. Back away now. Go away." He hadn't realized his voice had fallen into a whisper at the end of the speech until he heard himself speaking, but he hoped that would impress Malfoy.

* * *

Draco stared. He had to applaud Potter, once again, on the effort that he put into his barriers, and how high he had raised them against being knocked down, how well he intended to protect them.

It didn't matter. Draco intended to bull his way through, after all. Nothing else would work. No one else had been clever or stubborn or persistent enough. Draco intended to be the one who showed them how wrong they were.

_Even if no one but Potter ever knows that I am._

"I know a little more about what your childhood was like now," he answered instead. "And what your wars with the Dark Lord were."

Potter stared at him, face shining like bone. "His name is _Voldemort_," he said. "If you can't even say that, how am I supposed to trust that you have the strength to take me through the healing?"

Draco smiled back, letting his teeth gleam. "That's another attempt to manipulate me," he said. "If you don't want me to help you, then you won't be concerned about my strength in speaking the name or not. And I will call him whatever I please."

Potter waited in silence. Draco waited in silence, too. He was as determined as Potter was. Probably more so. Draco thought adding all his strength to the barriers probably hadn't left Potter with much will for anything else.

Sure enough, Potter succumbed first. "Fine," he muttered. "Whatever. What does knowing more about my childhood teach you, then?"

"That you're not contemptible," Draco answered, moving nearer. "That you're strong—maybe stronger than anyone expected, to come through that intact. And that I want to help you all the more."

"It didn't show you that I'm damaged?" Potter's brows were creeping up his forehead.

"No," Draco replied

Potter snorted.

"Very well," Draco conceded, "it showed me that you were damaged. It didn't show me that the damage was so extensive that you don't deserve to be helped."

"It _should _have shown you, if you paid attention to the message," Potter said, his voice low and charged, "that I have too much damage not to hurt someone else. Even if I don't mean to, even if it happens without my consent or knowledge. You said it yourself. I manipulate people. I put that last memory in there to hurt you. You want to be with someone who does that on purpose and lots of worse things without meaning to?"

Draco smiled a little. "You _are _skilled at this," he said. "At making someone who wants to help you give up hope. You even almost convinced me, and I'm more determined than any of the rest of them were."

"You think that separates you from the rest of them? Your determination?"

Draco knew what Potter _wanted _him to say. He didn't say it. He met his eyes instead, and smiled.

Potter closed his eyes. This time, the silence held, to the point that it didn't feel like losing when Draco broke in.

"You've already shown me the memories," he said softly. "More than you showed Tobley, at least, if what I've heard is true." He waited, but Potter didn't nod or deny. "You've taken one lesson from me. Why not let me in the rest of the way?"

"Because I don't want to hurt, and I don't want to hurt _you_." Potter's eyes opened. Draco had to look away.

"You won't," he said. "I can take care of myself. Can you _believe _me, _trust _me, that much? I won't lie to you and expect you to read my mind the way your other lovers did. I can take anything you throw at me."

Potter gave the shadow of a smile. "You've almost convinced me."

Draco shrugged. "I won't let you out of this office until I do."

The silence flickered around them, as charged as lightning. Draco knew what Potter was on the brink of saying—that he could break out of the office any time he wanted, if only by shouting for help, and both of them knew it.

But they both also knew he wouldn't, and why.

In the end, Draco knew, his determination to win out was greater than Potter's determination to keep him away—especially since he wouldn't use all the weapons at his disposal to do that, for fear of _really _hurting Draco.

Finally, Potter looked up and nodded. "You make no sense, but okay," he said. "This all in search of that acknowledgment you want so much?"

"Yes," Draco said slowly, remembering the fire in the young Potter's eyes. "And something else, too."

Potter stared at him, but Draco kept his own counsel. In the end, Potter shook his head and said, "I'll let you. But you won't like it."

Draco ignored that. "Come here, then," he said, beckoning. "I want to start the next lesson now."

Potter backed away. "Not in the Ministry." He turned and waited expectantly at the door until Draco unlocked it. "I'll come to your house." He cocked his head over his shoulder. "Or do you want to come to mine?"

Draco met his blank face with a smile. "I'll come to yours. I think you'll feel more comfortable there."

Potter closed his eyes, waited a beat, nodded once, and slipped out the door.

Draco shut it gently behind him and flopped into his chair. He wondered, for a second, if it was possible that he had overstepped his bounds and he would regret this.

But then he made a slashing motion with his hand in the air. So what? He had done things that he regretted before. Regret was survivable.

_I wonder if Potter knows that? _


	7. Stubbornness

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Stubbornness_

"Come in."

Potter's voice was low and exquisitely modulated. Of course, Draco thought as he stepped into Potter's home again, if he hadn't heard Potter shouting at him that morning, he never would have appreciated _how _exquisitely modulated.

There were some compensations for what he had gone through already. Not many, but some.

Draco turned around in the kitchen. Potter had shut the door and come up to him. His voice was silent now, but his face was the equivalent of it, completely bland and smiling. His work face, Draco reckoned, the one he presented to superiors and criminals and witnesses and co-workers who weren't as close to him as his friends. The wall down which all their blows and sobs and attempts to hurt him would slide.

Draco fit none of those categories, and he was already tired of looking at the blankness. He reached out and took Potter's shoulders in his hands, not hard and not for long, but long enough that Potter couldn't get the term "casual contact" to fit it.

Potter reared his head back and stared at Draco. Draco held his hands up before Potter could shrug them off and gave a shrug of his own.

"I didn't have much lunch," he said, turning back to the kitchen. "Any chance that you could make me a cup of tea, and maybe some scones or toast?" He smiled over his shoulder at Potter. "Nothing fancy. You won't find me demanding when it comes to food."

_Not with the kind of demand I'm going to make on your powers of tolerance._

Potter stared at him again, then visibly shook himself and moved on into what Draco was sure was another mask, the kind host. "Of course," he said, stepping past Draco and waving his wand in circles as he Summoned the things he needed to make tea, sugar, cream, butter, and what looked like some of the oldest scones in the world. "Is this good enough?"

Draco took one of the kitchen chairs, not saying anything until Potter looked at him again. Then he nodded. "It'll be fine."

Potter muttered something under his breath before he turned away. Draco cupped a hand around his ear. "What was that?" In truth, it sounded like Potter had called Draco "Your Majesty" and confessed something about the difficulty of pleasing him, but Draco couldn't be _completely _sure and preferred to hear everything clearly.

"It doesn't matter," Potter said, with some of the roughness Draco had heard in his voice that morning in the office, and began to bang the tea together.

Draco settled back and sighed. "Strange as it might sound to you, Potter, I actually do prefer my hosts be willing to have me over."

Potter kept his back turned as he continued making tea. "It doesn't matter," he repeated. "You would have continued banging on my door whether I was willing or not. Go somewhere else if you want someone who's happy to have you there."

Draco rolled his eyes. _A wonderful beginning. _And he couldn't even deny what Potter had said, because it was true.

"Fine," he said. "I do apologize for making you uncomfortable and making a nuisance of myself when you would prefer that I go away."

Potter glanced cautiously at the kettle under his hands, as if it might explode, and then back at Draco. "But that isn't the same thing as apologizing for forcing yourself into my life. Or the kissing lesson the other day."

"No." Draco focused on Potter. He stood hunched with his head bowed, as if he expected a blow from above. His hair still tumbled in a way that made Draco itch to touch it, though, if only with a comb. "Why don't we go into the drawing room and eat our tea?" Draco added, conjuring a tray to hold the cream, butter, and scones.

Potter said, "Huh?"

Draco grinned. "Are you always this charming around uninvited guests? I meant that the drawing room is more comfortable, and we could sit on the same couch while we had our tea. You might relax more."

Potter turned to face him. "And _I _meant, it's your tea. Not mine. I'm not hungry."

"Uh-huh," Draco said, eyes half-lidded. Potter might have had lunch, true, but it was four in the afternoon, and Draco thought he could eat. "Then come with me and sit with me as I sip the tea and crunch the scones."

Potter's head went up fast enough that Draco thought he'd probably hurt his neck. "The scones I make are not _crunchy_."

"They are when they're old," Draco said, although it surprised him that Potter had made these rather than buying them. Draco hadn't pictured him doing anything but his job and casual dates and maybe running, the way he had been the other day when Draco found him. "Come on," he added, standing up and giving a dramatic flex of his back. "These chairs hurt my arse. What did you buy them for, your pet snakes?"

"Shut up," Potter said, but it was half-hearted. He finished the tea and brought the kettle and the cups floating out, while Draco carried the tray. Potter raised his eyebrows at that, but didn't say anything as he poured the tea into two cups.

Draco sat down on the large couch where he'd sat before, with Potter kneeling in front of him, to practice the kissing lessons. Potter started to sit down on the chair nearest the fireplace, but Draco cleared his throat for nearly a minute, and Potter stood up and faced him, clutching the kettle now as if it might save him from drowning.

"Sit with me," Draco said softly, extending his hand. "I promise that I'm not going to try to kiss you. If that'll make you feel better," he added. Sometimes, Potter was such a bundle of contradictions that Draco thought he might feel insulted by statements like that, as if Draco doubted his skill at sex.

_I don't. I do doubt that anyone took the time to teach him anything._

Potter watched him in silence. He wasn't trembling, Draco saw, but poised on the balls of his feet. He had hair hanging in his eyes, his head bowed. His hands had fully closed around the kettle now. If it burned him, he gave no sign.

Draco kept his hand extended and his eyes on Potter's. There was no magic flying around at the moment, no shouts, but this felt like the most crucial moment of all.

* * *

_Just to sit with me? _

That hadn't been what Harry had expected. He had thought Malfoy might want to lecture him again, or see more memories, or practice kissing. This seemed—weird. Well, normal, but weirder than usual for all that.

And Harry had a hard time making his feet shuffle the short distance to the couch.

He pushed himself to it, finally, when Malfoy's arm began to shake. Harry might cause Malfoy mental pain beyond all bearing, but at least he could avoid causing physical pain. And it seemed that Malfoy was stubborn enough that a little physical pain wouldn't drive him away immediately.

_Even though he wouldn't be feeling it if not for me._

Harry settled onto the couch beside Malfoy, shaking his head. His lovers had tried to stick it out for his sake, but when the pain became too much for them, when it happened constantly, then they ran. Harry had hurt Malfoy with the letter and the last memory in the Pensieve and by trying to push him away. Why wasn't this the last straw? Where was Harry going to find his boundaries?

"Good."

Harry started and glanced up. For some reason, he had thought Malfoy would drop his hand once he saw that Harry had no intention of taking it, and lean back, and go on drinking his tea. But he had turned and put his hand on Harry's knee—to the right of an ugly scar that curled around the kneecap, although with the cloth and the glamours that wrapped Harry's legs, he couldn't know that. Harry froze, trying to remember whether Malfoy had seen that scar when Harry had made his clothes transparent at the Manor or not.

"Listen," Malfoy said, his voice so low that he sounded closer than he was when Harry glanced up and measured the distance. "I want to put my arm around your shoulders and lean on you. Or have you lean on me," he added quickly. Harry had felt something change in his own face, in his own eyes, and hoped that it wasn't the cause of Malfoy's words, but suspected gloomily that it had been. "Nothing else for right now. No kisses, no touches that you aren't comfortable with. I just want to hold you."

"That's ridiculous," Harry said, and laughed. He expected to see Malfoy wince, but Malfoy just went on looking at him. "I mean—_what the fuck_?"

"It's so ridiculous to want to have human contact that extends beyond sex?" Malfoy inclined his head. He might have been bowing to someone or something, except that Harry was no one to bow to, and he couldn't accept that Malfoy might believe he was. That _didn't happen._ "It seems to me that you're the one who's ridiculous in the way you forget basic concepts, in the way that you think everything goes back to your scars and your mouth."

Harry shook his head. "I didn't mean it like that," he said, although when he thought about it, he had to admit that maybe he did. Holding someone just to hold them belonged to people like Ron and Hermione, not to him, and he'd stopped thinking much about what other people did in the bedroom, surrounded by his own failures.

But he didn't have to admit it aloud, or to Malfoy. He said, "I meant that you can't want to hold me."

"Why not?" Malfoy sat there with one hand flung along the back of the couch now, and the other on his teacup, which he held to his mouth.

And _damn it, _he had once again put Harry in the position of having to explain what should be self-evident. Harry waved a hand, and snarled when Malfoy looked at him and made no attempt to stop him from flailing it around. "Because you should want to hold someone who brings you pleasure."

"It's true that you're difficult and prickly so far, and haven't brought me as much pleasure as I imagine that you could," Malfoy said in a considering voice. "But right now, this is what I want."

"Whether or not _I _do?" Harry challenged him.

He expected Malfoy to smile. Frank would have been _laughing _by now, at the sheer inherent silliness of something like this. Harry didn't want to laugh anymore, he felt tears prickling his eyes, but he already knew how misaligned most of his fundamental responses were with normal human ones.

"You don't understand," Malfoy said. "I won't do it unless you want me to. You have to say I can. But that doesn't stop me from wanting it. I'm no saint. You know that already. I can't stop my desires, even if the other person doesn't always desire the same things. But I can stop myself from acting on them." He examined Harry critically. "I wonder if you've been the victim of someone who didn't stop."

Harry couldn't breathe. He wanted to get off the couch and move away from Malfoy, but it seemed that he couldn't do _that, _either. He clenched his hands. "I haven't been raped," he whispered. "Stop implying it."

"You think you raped other people, though?" Malfoy seemed to ride the changes of the conversation as smoothly as if he was on a broom, ducking his head a bit to peer into Harry's eyes.

"Yes," Harry said. "They didn't enjoy it. I didn't stop. I didn't _notice_."

"If unenjoyable sex qualifies as rape, then I've done my fair share." Malfoy set his teacup down on the table and held his hand out again. "Fine. We won't talk about what might have happened to you. I'd like five minutes of silence, anyway, to think and rest my brain. You're exhausting."

Harry looked pointedly at the door.

"Rest _with you_."

Harry could hear a soft little whistling sound in the room, and it took him forever to identify it. Himself. He was breathing, panting, like he had a hole torn in his lung.

He buried his face in his hands, and spent a long time wishing. But either his magic wasn't as powerful as he'd always thought it was or he didn't have any shooting stars handy, because when he looked up again, Malfoy still sat there, and his hand was still extended. Shaking with the strain again, but there.

Harry wanted to yell. The foulest insults he could come up with, all directed at Malfoy's parents and that nasty little Mark on his left arm. Maybe _that _would get the great fool to back off.

But Malfoy sat there, quiet and deadly poised, and Harry's breath and spit dried up in his throat. It seemed, incredibly, that Malfoy really wanted to hold him, and wouldn't stop sitting there until he either had to leave because it was late or Harry moved under his arm.

Harry closed his eyes. They burned and stung, of course. He couldn't be _normal _and just decide what he wanted like any person. He had to sit there and shake as though someone was hunting him, as though someone was trying to hurt him.

He didn't think Malfoy was. The great git was trying to _help, _by his lights. Well, and take what he wanted, but he had also talked about his desires to heal Harry and cuddle with Harry as though that was part of what he wanted.

"My arm's getting a bit tired."

Harry looked up, hoping that circumstances had taken the choice from him, but no such luck. Malfoy had his mouth closed now and his eyes fixed on Harry. His arm was still out, trembling from the strain, but waiting.

For Harry, if he wanted to creep under it.

Harry wished Frank was here. He could explain to Malfoy exactly why Harry had had too many chances already and shouldn't be given another one. Harry would do his best to discourage Malfoy, but it wouldn't be enough, he _knew _it wouldn't. Malfoy would go on making offers, and Harry would go to him because he was weak, and Malfoy would be hurt in the end.

Because he was so weary he had no choice but to give in, Harry crept beneath Malfoy's arm, and leaned his head on his shoulder. His whole body shook. He thought he would weep, but he didn't. The sharpness and stinging stayed around his eyes. He closed them, so that Malfoy would have less of reflected weakness to look at.

_Why couldn't I just keep everything to myself? Why couldn't I keep it casual? It must have been something I did, but I don't know when I made the mistake. _

Maybe letting Malfoy close enough to see that something was abnormal at all. That must have roused his curiosity…

Except that even Harry's intellect, which he knew wasn't the sharpest one that had ever existed, faltered on the idea that Malfoy would do everything he had done because of _curiosity. _

It made no sense, and he lay there, arm heavy as a quilt across his shoulders, shudders melting into relaxation that he knew he didn't deserve and was only happening because of his own weakness, words frozen in his head.

* * *

While being this close to Potter would be more pleasant if Potter _relaxed, _Draco couldn't say that he didn't like it.

In an odd way, of course. As Potter leaned against him and made tiny, desperate whimpering noises into his neck, Draco caressed the back of his right hand and noticed the lack of a Blood Quill scar. His fingers could still trace the letters, but a glamour covered them from sight—a sophisticated one, one that Potter must have spent time studying. His words about private lessons now made more sense.

Draco hadn't missed Potter's near-panic when Draco touched his knee earlier, either. He had wondered for a moment if Potter had somehow injured himself between that morning when they were together in Draco's office and now, but then he rejected that thought. It was more likely that another scar lay there, and Potter was afraid of offending or repulsing Draco if he touched it.

_That's why he uses the glamours. _Draco never remembered him doing so a few years past, when Potter still seemed to have a regular succession of wizard lovers. Now, he probably thought himself too ugly to be exposed to the sight of others a majority of the time.

Draco wondered what he could do to change that. Well, he had already kissed the scar on the back of Potter's hand. Perhaps more of the same would be required—in time.

For now, though, Draco turned his attention back to the whimpers and pants Potter was pressing into his neck, and ran his hand slowly, gently up the side of Potter's shoulder. Potter immediately tensed, hard enough that Draco winced. "Hush," he whispered into Potter's ear.

Gooseflesh immediately spangled the nape of Potter's neck, which Draco could see where Potter's jumper had slid down. Draco blinked, surprised. Did Potter have sensitive ears? Maybe. Or maybe the simple gesture of someone speaking comforting words to him was rare enough to produce a strong reaction.

Draco eased back and to the side; the couch was so big that he still had plenty of room between himself and the arm. He coaxed Potter with him, and Potter was so busy hiding his face that he didn't realize what Draco was doing at first. When he did, he started in Draco's arms like a nervous Crup.

"We can't—we can't _lie down_," he said, voice squeaking as if Draco had tried to seduce him.

But wasn't everything Draco did now part of the same, slow seduction? Draco reckoned it was, if one wanted to think of it that way.

He stroked Potter's arm, and watched the same gooseflesh spring up in the wake of his fingers, saw Potter shift as if to protest, and smiled a little at him. "No, we can't. That would be hard on a couch. But what's wrong with leaning this way?"

Potter swallowed a couple of times. Draco saw him rejecting responses that he probably knew wouldn't get him the rejoinder he wanted. Draco waited him out, reaching up now and then to toy with Potter's hair. Potter blushed, but showed no other reaction, lost in his search for words.

Draco sighed out his irritation. Sooner or later, he would touch Potter and Potter would be focused utterly and absolutely on his fingers, with no way to _think _about anything else. But that wasn't true right now.

"I don't want to do anything that reminds me of sex," Potter whispered finally.

Draco paused. That objection made sense, and he could feel the long shivers that ran through Potter, violent action barely subdued into remaining there against Draco's side. "All right," Draco said, and sat up again, although he contained Potter within the circle of his arms when he tried to move away. "Then let's sit here and cuddle."

Potter whipped his head around. The shivers subsided for the first time that Draco could remember. Instead, Potter looked as if he would choke with laughter.

"_Cuddle_?" he repeated. "A word like that is in the vocabulary of a Malfoy?"

Draco sniffed. "Of course it is," he said. "Or did you think that I booted my lovers out of bed the moment I was done with them?" He touched Potter's arm again. Potter considered him with bright eyes, and then reached out and pulled his sleeve down, covering the bare skin Draco had touched before. Draco pulled it up again. Potter pulled it down.

Draco let it stand this time, but leaned back against the couch, and considered Potter with eyes that he knew were liquid. "What did you think I did?"

Potter rubbed his face hard enough that Draco thought he would take off his nose. "I don't know, exactly," Potter finally snapped, when he seemed to realize that doing that wouldn't get rid of Draco. "I never had reasons to consider your prowess in bed before this week."

Draco laughed softly, and curled his other arm around Potter's waist when Potter began those shivers again. "Well, I know the word cuddle, and I know how to do it." He paused. "Which is more than you do."

"I _can so _cuddle," Potter snapped, then tried to fold his arms. He could only do it awkwardly, because of the way Draco was holding him. "I just don't usually do it because I hurt someone."

"How can you hurt someone by holding them?" Draco asked, curious how Potter's lovers had justified that particular complaint.

Potter's smile had a sharp malice that Draco might have liked if it had been directed against someone other than Potter himself. "I squeezed them too tightly. And being held by someone who raped you isn't comforting."

"Tell me who used that word," Draco said calmly. "And then we can go and talk to them, and they can explain why they didn't bring word of what you did to the Aurors."

Potter narrowed his eyes. "Because they care about me more than I deserve, and didn't want to do that."

"I heard some true things about you," Draco said softly. "They aren't above gossiping. They just don't always gossip about the same things. You didn't rape anyone, Potter. That's your exaggerated sense of guilt and the fact that your lovers were arseholes talking."

"They didn't act that way." Potter sat up straight and still in Draco's hold, and watched him as if he was estimating Draco's magical power so he would know how much trouble he would be to arrest. "You're lying."

Draco rolled his eyes. "What's more likely, that none of your lovers, who were arseholes enough to hurt you for their own comfort, ever gossiped, or that I'm lying? What investment could I have in lying about them?"

Potter wrapped his arms around himself, shuddering. Draco was sure he had done the same thing for the last year, perhaps minus the shuddering. Or had he denied any sort of hug to himself, strong in the knowledge that he didn't need it or didn't deserve it? Draco could picture that happening. "Because you keep saying it's them, not me. That I didn't do anything."

"I didn't say that," Draco said. He kept his voice low and clear. "I know that you kiss horribly, because you showed me, and you are scarred, and you did want to have casual sex at first. But that doesn't mean that you raped people, that you never deserve love again, that you don't need a wizard lover, or that you're worthless as anything but a mouth to come inside. And for right now, to hold you is what I want. Can you tolerate that?" If Potter couldn't, then Draco would let him go, but it hadn't escaped his notice that Potter had sat with him, so far, making no move to withdraw even though he could have. He was Draco's superior in magical power and knowledge about how to defend himself.

_It's not like working in the Potions Division provides a lot of experience in escaping crazy criminals._

Potter swallowed. "I want it," he whispered, and Draco knew then that he had misunderstood the shivers. "I just don't want to think about what will happen to you if _I _let it happen."

"Let me worry about that," Draco said firmly, and pulled Potter into his arms, arranging him so that Potter was leaning his head on Draco's shoulder, the way Draco had started to position him before they got pulled into this discussion. Then he wrapped his arm around Potter's shoulders, kicked his legs out so that he was comfortable, and sighed as he stroked Potter's hair. "There. Now, let's be quiet for a while, and warm."

_No problem with that. _Potter was like a blazing blanket, draped over him. Draco closed his eyes and listened to Potter breathe.

* * *

Harry couldn't remember the last time he had sat like this with a lover.

And that was disturbing, both because it might imply that Malfoy was right and because Harry was sure at first that he _must _have. What about all the close moments he had shared with Frank? With Ginny, before they learned that he wasn't right for her and never could be? With Jacquelyn, in some ways the slowest of all his courtships?

But no, he couldn't remember it.

He relaxed despite himself, because Malfoy was warm, and near, and breathing as softly and steadily as though he considered all of this a closed issue and of course Harry would do whatever he wanted from now on. Harry shut his eyes and swallowed. The shivers that made him want to break away and _do something _had subsided now, but he thought they could return at any time.

But they didn't. And the longer they sat there, the more Harry felt the tension drain out of his muscles, and the more he noticed about Malfoy.

Malfoy wasn't actually all that big and intimidating, although he had sure as hell seemed like it in his office this afternoon. He was slender, but not skinny, other than on his hipbones, one of which was poking Harry right now. Harry shifted before he thought about it, and Malfoy moved his legs, and then they were slumped closer than before, but also more comfortable than before.

Harry realized that he was holding his breath, his heart kicking in his ears. He released the breath, and Malfoy chuckled and shifted closer, his mouth right on the lobe of Harry's ear. But he didn't say anything, and he didn't move further, except to stroke his hand up and down through Harry's hair.

It—was weird. Harry had complained, even if without words, and it had resulted in a change that was for the better, and Malfoy didn't seem hurt. Harry hadn't caused him pain.

Harry could feel something teetering in his head. That was a bad sign, one that he would ordinarily have gone running to escape, but there was no escape this time, and he had to sit there and wait for the wall to collapse. Malfoy didn't help by being all slow and steady and calm, so that Harry felt as though he was skittering around inside a cage that wouldn't tip over no matter how hard he ran.

The wall fell.

And the thought was there, running down the alleys of his mind, so present that Harry could no longer have escaped it even if he wanted to.

_Maybe I didn't cause him pain because not everything I do can cause someone pain._

Harry choked, and kept on choking. He could feel Malfoy's hand on his hair move to his back, patting and then slapping. Harry dug his fingers into the couch and pressed down. Malfoy immediately reached over and picked up his hands, peeling back his fingers with such delicate care that Harry was sure he had used the same technique on Potions ingredients.

"You're all right," Malfoy said, inescapably, his eyes on Harry's as though he knew all the thoughts there and could quiet and tame them. "Whatever you're thinking, it's not as bad as what you're thinking."

"That's a tautology," Harry muttered, but shut up when he heard how weak and stupid his voice was. He bit his lip savagely and bent over, hands on his knees. He couldn't withdraw as far as he wanted to, though, because Malfoy was still there, wrapped around him, confining him. Harry drew a breath, and it didn't feel constrained. "I—you kept saying, before, that I didn't always hurt you, and that I was being patronizing for fearing what I could do to you."

Malfoy cocked his head. "Yes. I'm not helpless, and you acted as though I was, or at best, a child who couldn't make my own decisions."

"I heard you say that, and I tried to believe it," Harry said. "Mostly because you wanted me to so much."

Malfoy's eyes twitched, and a peculiar smile curled along his mouth. "Of course. God forbid that you believe it because it's _true_."

Harry shook his head, determined to fend off the argument that he could feel getting ready to happen. "But that's what I mean. I didn't feel it, I didn't think it was true, no matter what you said. But this time, I did. When I shifted around and you moved your leg and you weren't angry at me for wanting you to move it."

Malfoy paused, his hands still on one of Harry's, his eyes huge and filled with an odd shadow. "So small a thing," he said. "No one else would even notice it at all. If you had brought it up a week from now, I'm not sure I'd remember it."

Harry flinched a little, because he knew what he might seem like to Malfoy, and he didn't want Malfoy to have to look at such a pathetic thing. But while that thought stung him, so did the realization that he'd come to, whether he wanted it or not, and he bowed his head. "I don't always cause you pain," he whispered. "So that must mean there are other times when I won't, either. I just have to find them."

Malfoy nodded. "Good," he said, his voice unsteady. "Now. Can we cuddle some more?"

Harry blinked. He bit his tongue, though, because nearly all the things he could have said were mockery or would come out that way. And he wanted to see what it felt like, to be held by someone, at least when he was less tense than he had been the first time.

"Sure," he said, and leaned back on the couch, and waited to see what Malfoy would do.

What Malfoy did was peer very hard into his eyes for a second, and then nod, as if Harry had passed some test by agreeing. He slid his arm around Harry's shoulders again, drawing Harry towards him. Harry shut his eyes, accepting that Malfoy wanted to be near him, might enjoy the sensation of Harry's hair rasping past his ears—in fact, probably did, or he would have moved away—and sighed out a tension that had confined him more than Malfoy's embrace.

Now that he was leaning close and not thinking constantly of what was going on inside his own head, he was free to notice other things. Like the way Malfoy's heartbeat skipped along beneath his ear, never steady, in contrast to the way his chest rose and fell. Like the way Malfoy's hand moved on the side of Harry's neck, fingers rasping and tickling where they could reach skin, rasping and catching where they touched cloth. Like the way Malfoy's hair was soft and generous, reaching out and enfolding _everything _on the side of Harry's face.

Harry closed his eyes. Just this once, he didn't have to be aware and alert of all the possible paths out of the room, or all the injuries he might inflict without trying.

Just this once, he let himself go, and was at peace.

* * *

Draco stamped the smirk out of his face. The last thing he needed now was for Potter to glance sideways, take it the wrong way, and bolt free.

He had thought Potter was a cuddler, and he was. He might be inexperienced at it, but from the manner in which he melted against Draco's side, he wanted more of it.

And it would be Draco's pleasure to provide.

Potter's shoulders weren't any bonier than anyone else's. His eyelashes, which Draco could see from the side, and from above when Potter shifted his head on Draco's shoulder, were longer than normal, though. Draco fluttered his fingers gently above the lashes, and they quivered and prickled. Potter opened his eyes.

"You do have remarkable eyes," Draco whispered.

Potter's shoulders lifted, but fell back down with a little sigh. His face twitched. "Thanks," he whispered back.

Draco smiled and leaned his chin on Potter's forehead. "We'll get you to accept a compliment yet," he said.

"Oh," Potter said, and Draco had to blink at the humor he heard underneath the surface of his voice, "that's not a compliment that bothers me. It's just such a _common _compliment. Everyone who wants to date me starts by praising my eyes. Even you said something about them, in the Sapphire Rose. Excuse me for thinking that you would come up with a more original one."

Draco tried not to show how those words affected him, though he supposed Potter could hear part of it, in the heartbeat underneath his ear. He trailed his fingers through Potter's hair again, and down his neck. This time, the gooseflesh that followed his touch came more slowly, as though Potter had had time to think about things and decide that he liked the way Draco stroked him. Draco curled his fingers under so there was no chance of his nails scratching Potter and whispered, "I can come up with something more original."

"It shouldn't start with how my hair is like blackest coal, either, or the darkness between the stars," Potter warned him. "Or with how I strike as quick as lightning, just like my scar."

Draco had to wait to speak, because—well, _because_. "People _say that_?"

"All the _bloody time_," Potter said, letting his head droop and burying his nose in Draco's robe, so that his words came out muffled. Draco could make them out as easily as though they had spent months together. "That's another reason for being wary about compliments. The vast majority of them are stupid."

Draco touched Potter's head again, moving so that his chin was resting more firmly on Potter's hair, and Potter was curled more into his side. Potter made a sound that Draco couldn't interpret, but he breathed more slowly, and didn't shift away. That made this hug a success, as far as Draco was concerned.

"I can think of something to say," Draco said.

"Well, say it then." Potter's voice was low, so soft that Draco spoke as if to the voice of his own thoughts.

"Hearing your name reassures me."

A pause, and Potter rustled his hair as if he would lift his head and confront Draco. Draco laid a hand on the back of his neck and stilled him again. Potter grunted, then said, "What does that mean? It reassures you because you know that a hero is on the way, and everything is going to be all right again?"

"Merlin," Draco said. "You _are _hard to compliment."

"Yes," Potter said, the first time Draco had heard him say something that blunt without stopping to apologize for it. "And you aren't the sort to require a hero. So, what does it mean?"

Draco sighed. "I mean that it reminds me that there's someone in the world who survived dying. Who survived the Dark Lord. Who survived the war and Dumbledore and Professor Snape and even me being irritated with him, on the days when I want to assign myself that much importance. It—it meant more when I didn't know how much your lovers had damaged you. I thought you were supremely confident and had everything. A survivor, not a hero. That's the way I saw you."

The silence that settled between them made Draco's mouth go dry. Then Potter said, "And now?"

"More complicated than I thought," Draco said, and made his voice as grave as he could. "Deeper. The survivor has other things to survive. It doesn't mean that you're going to frighten me away." He drew back and sank both hands into Harry's hair, pulling a little and working his way down towards Harry's neck. He knew a lot of blokes who liked having their hair pulled, and so far, he knew nothing much about what Harry _liked. _He knew what didn't work, what disgusted him, what frightened him, but that wasn't any kind of basis to stay with him.

Harry reached back and caught his right hand. He was sitting up again now, his gaze so solemn that Draco stopped teasing. He didn't pull his hands back, though. Harry was only squeezing his wrist a little, not forcing him away.

"What?" he asked softly, his lips barely moving.

Harry said, "I wonder if it still isn't best for you to back out. I know you have the determination to carry this through—I don't doubt that, now—but is it really going to be worth enough to you? You've told me why you wanted to be with me, but it's going to take so much patience, so much work…Really? This is what you want?"

Draco half-closed his eyes, because what he could feel in them right now would do Harry no good at all. "I thought we had a talk about you presuming to know what I think and feel better than I do," he murmured.

"I didn't mean that," Harry muttered. "If you like, I'm protecting myself with this, more than you. I want to know that you aren't going to quit on me halfway through the process, and walk away to find someone more accommodating."

Draco could hear the unspoken words this time as clearly as he could the other times. _Like they did._

Draco sat up and drew Harry with him, until Harry was nearly straddling his lap. Draco slid his hands into place around Harry's cheeks and made sure that he couldn't look away.

"I can't promise that I'll always be here, because no one can promise that," Draco told him soberly. "I could be taken out by a rival Potions brewer who wants my position tomorrow."

"And I thought _I _had the dangerous job," Harry muttered.

Draco smiled, but not enough to allow the words to distract him from the conversation. "But I can promise that I don't want to give up. You've shown me your scars, and they haven't disgusted me. You've shown me your memories, and they just made me want to know where the fire has gone. You've kissed me, even, and that wasn't enough to make me back off."

"Yeah, but…" Harry hesitated, then gave him a fleeting smile. "It's like the difference between acute and chronic disease, isn't it? It might be okay when you're getting a series of shocks and acute pains for the first time, but that doesn't mean you can endure for a long time. I might not drive you away, but I might wear you down."

"And you don't want to take a chance on something that's not forever," Draco murmured, sliding his fingers up and along the bottom of Harry's cheeks.

"Every time I started dating someone, I thought about what it would be like to stay with them for the rest of my life," Harry said. "I thought Ginny was the one. I realized she wasn't after we broke up, but I didn't think it was impossible for me to form a bond that would last." He grimaced. "Until I realized that I'm not built that way, and it was easier to accept it than keep agonizing about it."

"I don't know if I'm built that way myself," Draco offered. "But I'm willing to take the chance, and you are, too."

Harry laughed quietly. "Who else but you would take a chance on me?" he asked, reaching up to cradle Draco's wrists.

Draco shakes his head. "You're worth more than they made you feel you were," he said. "Now. Can you lean back?"

Harry watched him for a second with quickening eyes and a mouth that opened to ask questions. But then he shut his eyes and nodded. He slumped back against the couch instead of asking anything, spreading his legs and arching his neck back as if he was offering his throat up to be eaten.

Draco swallowed, wondering if Harry noticed how hard he was, how hard Harry _made _him. But maybe that was something to call to his attention later, considering what Draco wanted to do right now.

He slid out from under and on Harry, which took a minute and made Harry laugh without opening his eyes. Then he knelt down in front of the couch, the way Harry had yesterday when Draco was kissing him. Harry swallowed but still didn't open his eyes. Draco reached up and lightly touched his chest, his fingers resting over Harry's heart.

The heartbeat increased until Draco almost expected to see it leap out of his chest. Harry shifted his weight, but quieted and sat still when Draco hushed him. Draco stood up and reached out to place his hands on Harry's shoulders.

Harry's eyelids jerked then, although they still didn't open. "What are you doing?"

"Learning you," Draco whispered to him. "The kind of casual touches that I like."

As he had thought, just saying he liked it was enough to make Harry shut up and give in. He rolled his head back and lay there, his face going slack as Draco caressed his shoulders, learning the curve of his shoulder blades, and then knelt down and lifted Harry's legs. When he tickled the back of his knees, Harry snorted.

Draco was smiling as he knelt further and pulled one of Harry's socks off.

In an instant, Harry threw his head up and held it there as if he'd been poisoned, glaring. "Don't," he whispered.

"Because your toes are so ugly?" Draco ran his fingers along Harry's foot, watching the way it flexed, admiring the muscles that trembled beneath the surface.

"Yes, damn it," Harry snarled, and tried to rip his foot away from Draco. Draco only moved with it, and took it in his hands again when Harry stopped moving. Harry shook his head furiously, but it was his hands that concerned Draco, digging into the couch hard enough to tear open the cushions; he wasn't trying to kick Draco in the jaw or hit him with a spell or do something else that might have forced him back. "Look. Look at my ankle."

Draco raised his eyebrows and bent his head a little. "It's a very nice ankle," he said after a moment, wondering what Harry wanted him to see.

Harry twitched his foot sharply to the side, and Draco made out the round scar on the side of the ankle. He thought it looked like something made with the end of a hot poker. Draco looked up and raised his eyebrows. "Yes?" he asked.

"_Shit_." Harry buried his head in his hands. "Fine, maybe that isn't so bad. Maybe you can bear that. But I showed you all the scars that lie under my clothes. Don't _tell me _that you don't value beauty. I—I know that you do, because you're so beautiful yourself."

Draco leaned back on his heels. Unexpectedly, he found that he was grinning, and the words he spoke next spilled out of his mouth before he could stop them. "My, how shallow you think beautiful people are. I'm surprised that you want to date them."

* * *

Harry clenched his hands in his lap again. He could see the laughter in the back of Malfoy's eyes, and he knew that Malfoy wasn't laughing _at _him; he was inviting Harry into the humor, not shutting him out, like the invitations that he kept extending for Harry to touch him and be with him and smile at him—

_What's the harm in accepting it? _

Because it would just end up the same way it always did, with Frank and all the others, Harry thought. With misery on his side and pain on the other. Frank hadn't betrayed him in gossip, Harry was sure of that, but they'd seen each other a few times since them, and Frank had held his eyes and shaken his head each time, to tell Harry that his wounds hadn't healed yet.

If Malfoy was more generous than the rest, more accepting, more _reaching, _then that was all the more reason for Harry to want to protect him.

"I'm here," Malfoy said, and slid his fingers along Harry's ankles, over the scar and then onto the one that still had the sock on. The jolt that burned through him made Harry start to sweat. Malfoy was there, and his eyes didn't move, and he repeated again, "I'm here. I'll go, but only if you send me away, not if you just flail at me and expect me to reject you."

Harry shut his eyes. The wall in his mind had still fallen, he found when he reached out. If Malfoy said that he wasn't in pain, if he could do something Harry wanted just because Harry wanted it and not complain about it, then maybe that was _real. _

And maybe some of the other things Harry had thought were wrong, too.

He became aware that his breath was rushing out, rustling out, that he couldn't get enough air, and he gasped.

The next instant, Malfoy was off the floor and beside him, tracing his fingers through the sweat on Harry's cheeks, and Harry turned and buried his face in Malfoy's shoulder, shuddering. Malfoy hummed to him and closed his fingers gently on the back of Harry's neck, picking up a fold of flesh and holding it there. His other hand slid over Harry's shirt, hovering, then pressing down, as if searching for something.

It finally came to rest, on the ugly round scar that the locket Horcrux had burned on Harry's chest. Harry swallowed, shuddered, and looked up. Malfoy just gazed back at him calmly, and shook his head a little, as though to refuse all the kinds of things Harry wanted to accuse him of.

"I'm here," he said.

Harry closed his eyes again. The words hammered and beat in his head, and the beat was steadier, stronger, than the low, remembered beat of the other words that followed him around all the times, the ones that reminded him about how he hurt people.

Harry reached up, slowly. Nothing happened. He slid his arm around Malfoy's neck, and pulled him closer, until Malfoy's head was bent into his and Malfoy's breath fell on his ear.

And still nothing happened. There was no cry of pain or rejection. Malfoy's hand settled more firmly on Harry's scar, but it was—it was hard to see that as something that Malfoy had either planned or hated.

Harry shuddered, and gave in. Maybe it was another wall falling, although it didn't feel like that. Maybe it was that he had finally started to trust Malfoy. Maybe it was just that he was so goddamn tired.

But one thing had to change.

"Draco," he whispered.

Malfoy rippled from head to foot, like a surprised eel. But before Harry could sit back and push him away, he said, "Yes, Harry?"

Harry dug his head further into Draco's chest—he had to be Draco, to hold him like that—and murmured, "Will you stay here with me for a little while?"

And Draco held him, just like that, for as long as Harry could bear the warmth and the melting sensation and the collapse of the steel that had gone up his spine for so long.


	8. Grace

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Grace_

"Draco."

The voice was one that Draco hadn't wanted to hear again for at least a year. He half-closed his eyes and turned his chair towards her, but kept his gaze fixed on the notes for the next batch of potions the Ministry wanted him to work on, a possible cure for vampirism. A Potions master in Austria had invented the basic formula, but hadn't elaborated on it before he died. Draco thought he would have to add rather more animal ingredients and cut back on the plant-based ones that particular Potions master seemed to favor. "Daphne. What do you want?"

"You don't really resent me, do you?" Daphne slid into his office, as Draco could see from the corner of his eye, her head bowed and her lip pouting out as she played with her fingers. "I was only looking out for your interests."

"How is persuading Potter that I've betrayed him looking out for my interests?" Draco looked up, smiling, and pleased to see her flinch away from the smile. "If nothing else, that could endanger my _life, _considering how powerful Potter is, and what he's inclined to do to those who betray him."

Daphne swallowed. "I'm sorry for the way I chose to do it," she said. "But the more I learn about Potter, the more I become sure that you shouldn't be attached to him at all, Draco. And there's no cost great enough to detach you."

Draco sighed and kicked his feet up on his desk. It was a slow day, and he watched the sunlight dancing through the enchanted windows, timing the moment until they changed to a pine forest by moonlight. "You and I both know this is so much froth, Daphne. Say what you came to say and leave."

For a long second, he thought she would leave _without _speaking; she just stood there, breathing, as if resentful that she wouldn't manage to trick him that easily. Then she blurted, "Did you know that Potter sleeps with Muggles?"

Draco turned his head slowly to look at her. "And?" he asked, after a pause. "I knew he wasn't sleeping with wizards, and I'd hardly expect him to stay celibate."

Daphne ran her fingers through her hair, the way she did when she was trying to decide if something was worth her while to say. In this case, Draco hoped she thought he knew all the details already.

In fact, he didn't. Harry had mentioned sleeping with Muggles and "practicing" with them to get good enough at oral sex, he hoped, to satisfy a wizard lover, but not a lot about who those Muggles were or where they went. Draco had thought that would come later.

_Although, with as slow as he is to trust me, maybe not until years later._

"Did you know that he goes to the Muggle clubs and sleeps with multiple different people every night?" Daphne laughed, and Draco couldn't tell if it was because of her own insincerity or because of something she saw in Draco's face. "Well, sleeps is the loosest term. He lets them come down his throat or on his tongue. He never does anything else. It makes you wonder if he can even _satisfy _someone, hmm?"

Draco controlled the urge to frown. It was one of the harder things he'd ever done. Yes, he'd known that Harry did that, or he'd thought he did. Multiple partners certainly factored into it. And it made sense that Muggle clubs, havens of anonymous sex, would be the places for Harry to gravitate to. He'd even said something about that.

It was just…

Daphne made it sound like Harry had had _hundreds _of partners. And that hadn't been something Draco had pictured. He especially hadn't come to terms with the fact, though he supposed he should have known it from the pieces he had heard, that Harry had spent all his time on his knees for someone else, never touching himself where they could see, never fucking them, never kissing them, never doing anything but pleasuring them.

It did make Draco wonder, yes. But what it made _him_ wonder was if Harry could accept cuddling from Draco, could accept lessons in kissing, could give Draco blowjobs, but would never want to do anything else. Would Draco even be able to stand up to his expectations after night after night of dozens of partners?

It made Draco resent it the more because he was sure that that was exactly what Daphne had been _trying _to make him feel. But he kept his face bland and inclined his head. "Thank you for confirming that you know nothing about him," he said.

Daphne stared at him and reached up to toy with the end of a hair. Draco nearly smiled. That had always been one of her giveaways when she was trying to spread gossip in the Slytherin common room, too. "What do you mean?"

"You know that you never venture into the Muggle world yourself," Draco said, with a gentle viciousness that he saw no need to restrain. "How would you know what Potter does on weekends? Have you observed it?" He clucked his tongue against his teeth when Daphne turned red. "My, my. You're less pure than I thought you were."

"One of Pansy's second cousins has a Squib friend who supplies him with Muggle drugs," Daphne gritted out. "He saw Potter at one of the clubs and recognized him."

Draco nodded understandingly. "Not even one of _your _second cousins," he said. "You used to be more creative with what stories you told, Daphne."

Daphne clenched her hands. "I'm telling you the _truth!_"

"I'm sure you are," Draco said, as kindly and patronizingly as he knew how.

Daphne kicked the side of his desk and took off running. Draco waited until she was out of the door to sigh and lean back, his feet still on his desk. To anyone else, he thought he would have looked the epitome of relaxed and casual.

But although he thought he had managed to fool Daphne into thinking he didn't believe her, he did. And the belief was inside him like poison.

_Harry. Did you do that? Have you gone back and done that since we started dating? _

He didn't think so, but then…there was so much he didn't know. And there were so many times in his life he had thought he was important to Harry Potter, only to find out that Harry regarded him differently.

_I have to talk to him._

* * *

Harry swore softly as he bounded around the corner in this massive underground complex that only the Unspeakables had suspected existed before now and found another empty room. There was nothing but bare stone walls that made Hogwarts classrooms look decorated and some burning, blue-flaring torches.

The Unspeakables had contacted him and Ron for help that morning. They hated to admit it, but it was clear that the Dark wizards they'd been tracking for the past few months, who had somehow acquired an incredible collection of artifacts that they sold on the black market to whoever would take them, had help from inside the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables wanted Aurors to track down the criminals and the artifacts while they worked on stopping the problem from their end.

Harry had thought it seemed like a simple job at first. They had found the source of the artifacts without much trouble, and once the Unspeakables found and stopped the person who had been selling off items from the Department of Mysteries and handing out information about when the next Unspeakable raiding team would appear, then any future supplies would also wither up.

But apparently the artifacts sold had included an engine that could generate an incredible amount of wizardspace, and also Invisibility Cloaks. Every room that Harry ran into was empty, and they spiraled out from each other, linked by tunnels that hadn't been on the Unspeakables' initial, supposedly accurate map of the place.

"Ron?" Harry called over his shoulder, keeping his eyes trained on the room. There were two doors in the distance, on the far wall, but one of them looked marginally less real than the other.

His voice echoed and died away. Harry was alone with the sculpted stone and the holes in the floor that looked as though artifacts had been yanked out unexpectedly. Harry cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself, even though his yelling for Ron would already have given him away to most of the people who had been here, and moved slowly forwards, his head turning to examine every surface. He had a few spells that could detect Invisibility Cloaks, but he'd prefer it if he didn't have to use them; they were just _this _side of illegal.

Something scratched in front of him. Harry dropped to his knees at once, and felt something sigh over his head, parting his hair like a scythe.

Instincts Harry couldn't even name raced through his head, glinting, and then he flung himself forwards at what he knew was the right height. Someone screamed indignantly in front of him, and he felt the slippery material of Demiguise hair under his hands.

"Ron!" Harry yelled again, and cast a Patronus, not to carry a message but to lead Ron back here. The silver stag galloped once around Harry, as if reluctant to leave him, before it turned and ran into the tunnel that had looked less real. Harry shrugged. He had to trust that the creature knew what it was doing, really.

"Harry Potter."

He looked down at the figure he'd captured. It was a young man, with a thin, pinched face that fleetingly reminded Harry of Draco's. Then he shook his head. Draco had grown up and got some liveliness to go with his face, while it looked as though that particular sot would remain permanently curdled.

"You're under arrest," Harry said, and cast spells that would bind the man up in his own Invisibility Cloak. It was a bit risky, as he might hide if he slipped away from them, but he would also trip and fall, and the Cloaks couldn't hide noise.

The thief didn't seem to notice what Harry had done. "Harry Potter," he whispered again, and struggled to sit up. Harry held him down with one arm across his chest, eyes searching for some sign of another Auror or at least a Patronus. Nothing so far. Harry _hated _cases like this, where the people they hunted turned out to have stronger magic than they'd suspected.

"You should have stayed away."

Harry looked down at the man again. That seemed to be what he wanted, because he rolled his head back and gave Harry a smile that was almost lipless. He lifted a hand. On his right ring finger sat a thick black band with a green-flecked dark stone in the middle of it.

Harry tensed despite himself, because it wasn't all that different from the Resurrection Stone, but the man seemed to take it for the wrong reason. He laughed. "Yes, behold your doom! With this stone, we know what anyone fears, and you were assigned to the case early on. We knew you would be. We've already looked into your past and future and seen what you would fear, Harry Potter."

"Really?" Harry looked again at the tunnel entrances, while keeping his body positioned so that the man would have no way of escaping. Where the fuck was Ron? "What is that, then?"

"Being scarred."

Harry whipped his head down, just as the man shot his hand up and flicked his finger against the base of the ring. The stone flipped back, and a clear, glittering liquid sprayed up from a hollow under it.

Harry rolled, thinking, _That's acid, that's acid, and it's going to hit me in the face—_

He felt a bite like a weasel's on his cheek, and screamed in spite of himself, while the man tried to flop his way to his feet, laughing maniacally.

"We knew it, we knew the stone spoke the truth," the man cried, though his voice was oddly hushed, as though he was trying not to wake someone up. Or was that only Harry's blood roaring in his ears? "We knew that you were a coward, that you feared something so simple, that we could—"

Harry struck out with the first spell that came to mind. "_Sectumsempra!_" he cried, and the man's voice died in a gurgle of blood.

Harry curled up on the floor, trying to fight his way to his feet. He could feel separate burning points of pain now, on his cheek, on his earlobe, underneath his left eye. Not _in _his eyes; he still had his sight, and he supposed that Hermione would tell him that was the important thing, the thing he should give thanks for.

But he couldn't, _couldn't, _not when his heartbeat was in his ears and he was picturing what he would look like with acid burns on his face.

_I shouldn't ever have started thinking that I could date someone else. I should have stayed with the Muggles._

He had learned control over the past year, though. He retained enough to cast a Numbing Charm on the parts of him that hurt from the acid, stand up, and stagger over to the wizard. Harry's spell hadn't killed him, after all; maybe because of the way he was standing, maybe because of the Invisibility Cloak he was bound to, it had caught him across the arm instead of the chest or the throat. Harry only had to stop the bleeding and cast a few Numbing Charms again to make him stable.

By then, Ron had _finally _run through the far tunnel, guided by the disappearing shimmer of Harry's Patronus. He jerked to a stop, his eyes full of a pity so awful that Harry curled his fingers like claws into the Invisibility Cloak beneath him.

"Get the other Aurors," he said jerkily. "I don't think we can find our way out of here on our own."

Ron shook his head and held out an arm. "It's mostly illusions," he said. "Tangible and auditory as well as visual, so we couldn't see that the maze of tunnels didn't really exist. We can—we can guide you out, and you'll be all right."

His voice sank on the last words, and Harry saw the way Ron's eyes steadily avoided looking at his face. So. It was as bad as he feared, then.

Harry stood up and let Ron bind his unconscious criminal. He didn't trust himself enough to touch the man right now. He already had a chorus of voices in the back of his head: Hermione saying that he shouldn't have used any of Snape's spells on someone, no matter what the provocation; Ginny's, saying she didn't understand the darkness and violence that lurked at the bottom of Harry's soul; Frank's, saying that one scar on his face was enough.

He wanted to go into silence and stillness when he got back to the Ministry. He hoped that the Healers would take the prisoner and Ron would take his statement, so that he could go away and write paperwork.

And figure out how he was going to tell Draco.

* * *

Draco narrowed his eyes. His owl had come back with the letter to Harry still attached to its leg. Draco could understand if it had been rejected from Harry's wards; Harry might have gone into some ridiculous fit of shyness after the last time Draco had held him and want to be alone. But there was a sign that the envelope had been opened and its seal broken. Harry had simply sent it back.

Like Draco was rubbish. Like he didn't deserve the courtesy of an honest answer.

Draco stood. "Can you take me to where he is?" he asked the owl. Some birds could, some others couldn't, and Draco had never tested the intelligence of this particular owl on the matter.

But it wheeled around the room for a moment as though getting its bearings, then took off and led the way down corridors towards the Auror Department. Draco blinked a little as he followed. He knew that Harry had been back for several hours; no one could have missed the commotion when the Aurors who had been assigned to that case came back, parading their prisoners. Why was he still here instead of at home?

The owl's pace and direction were uncompromising, though, and Draco didn't have to dodge a lot of people getting to his destination. It was late enough in the afternoon that most Ministry employees _had _gone home.

"Go home, mate."

That was Weasley's voice. Draco stopped out of sight, holding up his arm when the owl would have flown forwards. It promptly sat on his shoulder and started picking its way through its feathers for dust and parasites. It had brought him to his letter's recipient, said its abrupt movements, and in doing so, done all that could be expected.

"I don't want to." Harry, precise and quiet, but with a tone to his voice that made Draco turn his head and prick up his ears. Had something unexpected happened? Perhaps Harry had encountered one of his former lovers in the case, or the aftermath of the case? Draco had to admit that would please him, to know one of the bastards was a thief of Dark artifacts.

"I don't know exactly what's going on with you and Malfoy." From the sound of papers being moved, Weasley had sat down on the edge of a desk. "But I think he'll understand this."

Draco blinked. What could have happened that would damage the trust Harry had built up in him? Yes, perhaps meeting a former lover would hurt Harry's confidence, but he couldn't think Draco was foolish enough to be jealous?

_Well. He thought I would be jealous enough not to tell me about his Muggle conquests._

"I don't know if he will." Harry's voice was so low, Draco had to stop thinking to make out the words. "I—maybe. But I want to wait until I know how to say it."

Draco clenched his hands in silence, and wondered where all the trust that Harry had professed in him when he lay in his arms had gone. Or was Draco to be trusted only in private, and not in conversations with Harry's friends?

Draco had thought Harry too deep-hearted to care about something like that, had thought he would tell his friends. But perhaps not.

Draco faded back into the shadow as Weasley took his leave, with a heavy pat on Harry's shoulder and a shake of his head. "It's your choice, mate. But I think you should tell him as soon as you can."

"I _will_." Harry tilted his head back and stared at Weasley. "As soon as I _can_."

Weasley's sigh would have been enough to shake a building down. But he left, and Harry leaned further back in his chair, passing a hand over his forehead as though his scar was paining him.

That let Draco see what Harry might have been debating over telling him, at least. A small, pale mark shone on his cheek, and another below his left eye. Draco made out the remains of acid splashes.

_Scars. _

Draco tossed his head up. What was different about those scars from the ones that Harry had already shown him, some of which came from the war and the private memories that he'd put into the Pensieve for Draco? Hadn't Draco proved by now that he didn't care about what Harry looked like?

Draco took the letter from the owl and told it in an undervoice to go back to his office. Then he stepped out of the shadows. If he waited the days or weeks it would take Harry to find the voice to talk to him, then he might as well admit he would know nothing. Harry didn't trust him enough.

_Perhaps it's time to turn this around._

* * *

Harry touched the new scars, wincing. They were smaller than he'd thought they were; the acid that git had tossed at him had missed as much as the _Sectumsempra _that Harry had thrown at him in return. But he had to wonder how many other people had seen that artifact, the stone that told you what someone's fears were, before it was recovered, and whether the knowledge might pass on as gossip about Aurors so often did, from Dark wizards to rogue Potions masters to thieves, and he would find himself facing opponents armed with acid from now on.

_I don't think the scars will ever end._

"When were you going to tell me, then?"

Harry started violently. Draco was standing in front of his desk, looking down with opaque eyes. He had a letter in his hand—the same letter Harry had opened earlier, seen something about meeting tonight and the next lessons Draco would like to pursue, and handed back to the owl. He couldn't deal with it, so soon after wondering how Draco would react to his changed face.

Draco's eyes were raking him over with contempt. Harry felt as though something large and soft had punched him in the stomach.

_I should have known. I never should have lowered my guard that much—_

Harry snatched back the thought before it could finish itself. He thought that Draco probably didn't despise the new scars, the way Veronica would have. But he still wanted something from Harry that Harry couldn't give, deeper trust, in this case. For Harry to move past his issues and invite Draco into his life.

He couldn't do it. And Harry had the flavor of ashes in his mouth when he spoke, knowing that something was ending, something brighter and purer and cleaner than he'd allowed himself in a long time.

"I would have told you eventually," Harry said. "The way you know, if you were listening to my conversation with Ron."

Draco silently threw the letter onto his desk. "You could have sent me an owl saying that now wasn't a good time," he said, and leaned into Harry's desk the way he had before. _Why does he like the Auror Department so much for conversations? _Harry wondered, in an attempt to distract himself from the new, crumbling sensation in his chest. It was where Draco had asked him on a date, as well as started two confrontations that ended up playing out later. "That's what a normal person would do."

Harry smiled a little. Well. _That _was a familiar tack, wasn't it? And it hurt, yes it did, but it also turned Draco back into Malfoy, back into someone Harry could deal with.

"I know a normal person would have," Harry said blandly, and let himself slump in the chair and his smile widen. "But I'm not normal."

Malfoy sneered at him. "Did you think I would be put off by _that_?" he asked, gesturing at Harry's new acid-scars. "You really do think that I'm shallow and obsessed by prettiness, if you did. Or else you're judging my decisions again before I've made them, which I've _asked _you not to do."

"I thought that you would be put off by them," Harry agreed. "And I shouldn't have."

The tone he'd chosen made his agreement more offensive than insults, and Malfoy puffed up again. "You knew you shouldn't have, and you did it anyway?" he whispered.

Harry reached his hand as though to shield the acid scars from view, then let his hand drop, "accidentally" pulling back his hair on the way so that his earlobe and the acid burn on it would also show up. Malfoy opened his mouth, but Harry broke in. "I told you. The scars are important enough to hide. Maybe I shouldn't have felt that you would reject me for them, but I did. I _did _feel that way."

It was a trap. To escape it, Malfoy would have had to do what he did the other day, show that he understood the way Harry felt but ease him past it.

Instead, Malfoy fell straight into it.

"Then it was stupid of you." Malfoy had folded his arms across his chest, always an excellent sign. Harry could feel the brilliant ache that meant he was hurting someone, and the lightness, as if from the release of a leash, that meant he was setting someone free. "How could you think that I would—how much time do I have to spend reassuring you? I thought you trusted me after what you let me do the other day. I thought you were letting the barriers down."

That was perfect, and told Harry how to proceed. He folded his own face into an ugly sneer and threw his hands up defensively. "Maybe not fast enough for you!"

"I've been nothing but patient." Malfoy couldn't keep his arms folded. He paced a step closer, one fist coming down on Harry's desk with a sharp rap. "When do I get something in reward for my patience? I haven't asked you for promises, or kisses, or anything except that you acknowledge me."

"Which has been troublesome enough," Harry muttered, glaring up at him from beneath lowered eyebrows.

"I haven't asked for _anything _except what you wanted to give me," Malfoy repeated doggedly. "Like trust. And when were you going to tell me that you were sleeping with hundreds of Muggles? Excuse me, sucking them off." Again the sneer, this time with more barbs on it than Frank's had ever had. "Because sleeping with them would make you too vulnerable and start you thinking about rape again, wouldn't it?"

Harry's stomach went still. Then his heart began to beat again, and more life flooded his chest. He didn't know who had found out that he was going to Muggle clubs, but he could make a good guess, based on who had already tried to hurt them. And when he was done here, he would go find her and explain that trying to tug Malfoy further into this and cause him pain when he was already hurting was _not _a good idea.

But in the meantime, he had a lover to alienate.

"It would," he said, and let his voice deepen. "And I trusted you when I told you about raping my past lovers. You—"

"Nothing except your goddamn martyr complex would ever make you say that you'd raped them in the first place," Malfoy snapped. "You _know _that's not the way it works. You _know _that you didn't rape them. You just said that to get more sympathy."

Harry relaxed even more. He had been afraid that Malfoy would say Harry had claimed it was rape to keep future lovers at a distance, which might have made him think about what Harry was doing to him right now.

"I didn't say it to get sympathy," Harry said. "And I slept with Muggles because I could and it was practice and it was the only safe way to have sex without hurting someone and no one knew who I was—"

"Someone found out." Malfoy had swollen to the size of a puffer fish by now. "For fuck's sake, it's not like you have spines all down your cock or something. You're not hurting someone by having sex with them."

_How fortunate for you that you don't get to find out, _Harry thought, remembering the expression on Veronica's face a few times after they'd finished fucking, and retorted, "You can hurt someone through emotional means even more than physical ones. Not that you would know anything about that."

Malfoy ripped a hand through his hair. "I told you I cared about the emotional part even more than the physical part!"

Harry laughed at him, made it as ugly as he could. "Then why do you care if I was sleeping with Muggles or not? Aren't you not even supposed to consider them human or something?"

The flash of temper was more like a thunderclap. "I'm past those attitudes from the war. I thought you knew that."

Harry rolled his eyes. "But you're not past the ones that say your lovers should be pure, right? You knew before I sucked you off that lots of people had had my mouth—"

"There's a big difference between six or so, and_ hundreds._"

"What?" Harry widened his eyes and pressed his hand to his chest. "Why? Do you doubt the effectiveness of my Anti-Disease Charms?" He leaned forwards and let his eyes fix themselves on the center of Malfoy's chest. "I promise you, Veronica would have had something if I was careless. I fucked her after I fucked all those hundreds and hundreds of Muggles."

Malfoy swallowed, looking sick. Harry nodded a little. This was nothing more than the truth, the way that him being patronizing and scarred was. If Malfoy could have lasted through it, that was one thing, but instead Harry would get to drive him away.

And it would hurt, but Harry was used to pain, and this time, he wouldn't be stupid enough to choose another wizard.

"How many have you really slept with?" Malfoy whispered.

"I don't know," Harry said. "Hundreds is probably close to it. I went most nights in the last year."

Malfoy pushed himself stiffly back from the desk, watching him. "I wanted you to trust me."

Harry laughed, although this one stuck in his throat. "And I told you, I tried. But why should I have told you about this, when it disgusts you so much? That would only have made you leave faster."

"I wouldn't have been disgusted if you had _told _me about it!"

Harry leaned back and propped his feet up, shaking his head. "I don't believe you. Not the way you're looking at me and crinkling your brows. You're horrified to think that I had my mouth on your pure-blood cock when it's been God knows where else."

"That's _not_ what I'm horrified by," Malfoy said, and then looked as if he wanted to slap himself.

"Of course not," Harry said, and softened his voice, deepened it, to the level where it would make the most impact. "But you _are _horrified by _something. _It's all right. I know that I can't compete with the sort of future you can make for yourself. I know that you can't really show someone like me off at parties. And you would probably wonder about whether I was off with the Muggles even if I did date you. You would probably be insecure. And jealous."

The way Malfoy flinched said Harry's words had hit the mark. Harry let his smile deepen, and his sadness. Well. That was the way things had to work out, sometimes. Never let it be said that he didn't know how to hurt a lover. Perhaps his one true talent, along with Auror work.

"Not that," Malfoy whispered. "I didn't—I just would always wonder what else you were keeping from me."

Harry nodded, and then touched the acid scars on his face. "Are you horrified by this?"

"No!"

"Then what?" Harry swung his feet to the floor and leaned forwards, rapping his fingers on his knee for a moment. "What is it? You say that it's only a matter of trust that you care about the Muggles, but it's more than that, isn't it?"

Malfoy's face was drawn tight, his eyes squinched shut. Harry waited, but he wasn't going to say it on his own. So Harry spoke, the words that his pure-blood lovers would have said—not that they _had _said them, because Harry hadn't been practicing on Muggles when he dated them, but months and months of learning, in hindsight, what they had thought and felt had let Harry know them very well.

"You were raised to respect pure things, fidelity of a certain kind. You might betray a friend or a lover if the price was high enough, or if you found out they had betrayed you, but even that's a purity to a different dream or a higher ideal. You're not so much horrified by the lack of trust or the lack of fidelity to a lover as that I've let myself go to _hundreds _of people. I'm too experienced. You wouldn't want a virgin, but you don't want someone crowds of people have pawed, either."

Malfoy's eyes popped open, and he stared at Harry. Harry thought a denial would follow—a weak and unconvincing one, given that Harry might have just pulled out Malfoy's beating heart—or else Malfoy would say something cutting and try to press the argument back on Harry and what _he _had done wrong.

Instead, Malfoy simply ran away.

Harry blinked and sat back slowly. It seemed he had achieved what he'd failed to when Malfoy had shown up at his house for the cuddling session, and when he'd wanted to give Harry the lesson in kissing, and when he'd wanted the first date. He'd driven him off.

He didn't feel _good _about it, but for Harry, "good" had never been a steady state of being. He turned back to his paperwork, rubbing one of the acid scars and making mental notes to take a good look at his normal cheek and earlobe in the mirror that night. He would have to come up with glamours for them, too, but he didn't know those parts of his body well enough yet.

* * *

It wasn't until Draco had slammed shut the door of his office and was pacing furiously up and down in the center, trying to come to terms with the emotions that were suffocating him, that he realized what had happened.

_He played me. _

Like an expert, pressing on keys that weren't Draco's alone, but common to pure-blood wizards. And yanking on the emotions already swirling around Draco, the ones that came from Daphne's information.

And Draco had fallen for it.

The question, of course, was what he should do about it.

Draco closed his eyes. He was in no shape for another confrontation right now, and he already regretted starting a _third _one in the Ministry, even if the second one had been mostly in private, and this had had no witnesses because most sensible people had gone home. Harry could cut the ground from under his feet, shake him off, and reduce him into mortar to build the walls around his soul, after all.

Draco needed a place and a plan that Harry couldn't _render. _He had gone about this like a Gryffindor, and trusted in Daphne's information as blindly. This time, it had turned out to be right.

He still wasn't sure—how he felt about that. How he felt about the knowledge that Harry had knelt at the feet of so many Muggles as willingly as he'd knelt at Draco's. They'd seen the green eyes looking up at them, slipping shut as pleasure—

Draco cut himself off with a hiss. He was getting hard, which only proved how fucked in the head he was over all this.

But in the meantime, Draco was going to come up with a plan. He would go home for now, and consider what had happened, and what had made him vulnerable, and the best way to keep it from happening again.

And then he would take the battle to Harry again. This was a matter of pride now, of being different from the others, of escaping the traps that Harry had constructed for him and the intense way Harry had turned Draco into what he wanted, after all. Draco was already working to change Harry, and he didn't mind being changed back.

But not like this.

He gathered up the paperwork he needed and headed home, ready for a long night in front of the fire, and without an anger as clean and pure as he'd had only ten minutes before to support him.

* * *

In the end, it wasn't so very hard to track her down. Daphne Greengrass had several homes, as Harry had discovered with a minimum of research, but also an established routine that made him shake his head. For someone who thought he was hunting her, and also someone who had to have made enemies before with her dangerous gossip, she was astonishingly predictable. She spent the same few nights every week in a flat halfway down Knockturn Alley, in an actually _clean _building, for which she must have paid an exorbitant price.

She had wards on her front door, of course, but Harry had raided Knockturn Alley two dozen times and knew all the common ones. He passed through them like a ghost and climbed her front stairs to her door, where he knocked.

He could hear the rustle of movement inside pause, but then Greengrass obviously reasoned that if the person who'd knocked had come through her wards without alerting her, they must be a friend. Harry shook his head, sadly, as the door opened. So many Dark wizards made that mistake. Harry was thinking of running a class, at least for people already safely in holding cells.

Harry smiled brightly at Greengrass, his wand down by his side and the spell already in motion as her mouth began to fall open. "_Veritas tota contra rumores_," he hissed as he finished, and the magic shimmered up and helpfully hit her tongue.

"What the hell are you doing?" Greengrass hissed, falling back before him, but not slamming the door. Harry surmised that such a sound would attract unwelcome attention right now.

"Teaching you a lesson," Harry said. "You gossiped about me to Draco, _again, _which means that now you aren't going to gossip at all."

Greengrass laughed at him. "What are going to do to me? You're nothing but a Mudblood who should have been drowned at birth, ugly face and scar like an open wound and all." Her hands flew to her mouth a minute later, and Harry knew why. She hadn't meant to say that last part, no matter how much she might have thought it.

"Yes," Harry said gently. "That's what I did to you."

Greengrass released her hold on her mouth cautiously, as though the words would fly out again. Perhaps they would, Harry thought. She seemed so used to spiteful gossip that she might do it without meaning to.

"Nothing happened," she said, probably because a moment of silence had passed and she had the irresistible temptation to fill it with something. "Why didn't anything happen?"

"Because the spell only comes into effect when you mean to gossip," Harry said. "When it does, you'll say what you're really thinking, no matter what you intended to tell your enemies." He flipped off a little salute while she gaped at him. "And speaking the truth might still hurt some of your friends, I imagine, since it'll cut through that mask of false concern you use with them, but it won't allow you to damage reputations as effectively as you were doing."

"Wait! Potter!"

Harry turned away. He could feel her trying to come up with words to use against him, probably about Draco, but he didn't care if she did. They would still be constrained by the spell, which in the end would hurt her more than anyone else.

And he'd said more hurtful words to himself about Draco already.

* * *

Draco sighed and patted his stomach. His house-elves had served him a deep, full dinner with plenty of fruits sliced just the way he liked them, and chicken prepared so delicately that he would have sworn it wasn't chicken. And he'd spent most of the afternoon and evening thinking about the things that had gone wrong when he spoke to Harry and thought he knew the tack to pursue, now.

Of course, what he wanted to say would come easier in person than in an owl. Which meant he was hoping that Harry hadn't blocked his Floo connection to Draco's calls.

Draco watched as the fire flickered through the motions of turning green, letting his mind drift, refusing to let himself anticipate whether Harry would receive him or not. Then the green flared in the way that indicated the connection was established, and Draco sighed and rolled himself over on his elbow on the couch. At least he was close enough to stick his head in comfortably, without having to kneel on the hearth.

The firecall opened into an empty room at first. Then Harry stood up and paced forwards from the couch where they'd spent the other night cuddling, his arms folded and his face as polite and meaningless as blank paper. "Hello," he said. "Did you forget something you wanted to tell me earlier?"

Draco cleared his throat, trying not to imagine the past lovers who might have called Harry up again just to yell at him. "Yes," he said.

Harry nodded, passionless. "Then you might as well say it," he added, when Draco said nothing.

Draco took a deep breath. "I—I know that I did something wrong today."

Harry nodded again.

Draco clenched his hands around his stomach after all, making it bounce uncomfortably. Wasn't the idiot even _going _to—

But no, he wasn't. Harry had been through this game before, as he thought. Breaking up with people he'd trusted and slept with. Having them tell him things that they thought were true. Excuses for their inadequacies. Tirades about how insensitive Harry was. Half-apologies that were crueler than silence, given what they assumed.

Hadn't Draco already thought that before? That Harry had taken every rejection and insult and used them to build his walls higher, so that the next person wouldn't have as much chance of hurting him?

_Time to show him that this isn't a game. Not to me._

"I made an assumption about the way you slept with Muggles based on what _Daphne _said," Draco murmured. "When I already knew that she was untrustworthy and had tried to cause trouble between us in the past. I'm sorry."

"It turned out to be true, so I don't know why you're apologizing." Harry blinked at him. "She's been your friend for a long time. She was right in this instance."

_How can I be important to you? Compared to your friend? Of course I can't be. _

Harry was still playing the game, and Draco had to reluctantly admire his skill. Throw out the things that other people wanted to believe, and Harry would lead them astray. Draco had to remind himself, again, of what he had thought through. As so often in this strange connection they shared, it seemed nothing but absolute honesty would do.

"I came up on you at a bad time, when you were already defensive about your scars from the acid," Draco said. "I'm sorry. And I apologize for ranting the way I did about Muggles."

Harry's smile softened his face. "You didn't rant. I was the one who did most of that. And you have a perfect right to be disgusted and distressed. I know that Hermione is, too, hard as she tries not to show it."

_Sliding down that perfect wall again, _Draco marveled. _He's not going to let me in._

Well, did he have to, after what Draco had said earlier?

Draco drew a deep breath. "I've decided that I don't care about how many Muggles you've slept with. It's been long enough now since you—sucked me off that I would have shown symptoms of a disease if you had one. The only thing I ask is that you not sleep with any more, now that we're together. At least _while _we're together. If this doesn't last, by all means go back to them."

Harry's body tensed, then loosened again. "Actually, I already went out and blew one this afternoon," he said, shrugging. "Sorry."

Draco wanted to spit, but not for the reason Harry thought. "You're lying," he said. "The way your eyes darted off to the side? You're lying."

Harry snarled, and the polite mask shattered as if it had never been. "You _don't fucking care, _Malfoy. You made that _very _clear. I reckon scars don't send you running, they might even interest you in an odd way, but my past with Muggles did upset you, and it would always come between us. I didn't know you would show up and date me, did I? I didn't save myself all pure and a virgin for you. Yeah, I've slept with lots of Muggles. And I _enjoyed it_."

Draco clenched down, hard, on his own flare of disgust. "You did it because you thought you couldn't have a wizard," he said. "Maybe you enjoyed it in your own way, the way you did blowing me. But it's not the same as having someone who holds you and cares about you."

"You're right," Harry said, nodding. "When the person who holds you _actually cares about you, _and doesn't turn against you when you tell him the truth. We're too different, Malfoy. I'm too promiscuous for you, and I would take too long to give you what you want."

"What do you think I want?"

"Trust," Harry said. "I've only given you a bit of it so far, and now it's not going to come around for a long time, oh, a _long _time, Malfoy. Assuming I was foolish enough to believe you again, which I won't. And you would get tired and back off again. You've had too little reward for too much struggle. I might believe that you like a challenge, but I don't believe that you have the _patience _for me."

Draco ground his teeth. Too much of that was true. Harry had grown too skilled at protecting himself. Maybe Draco had shut the way behind himself too well.

But he refused to believe that as long as Harry was still here and talking to him. He had expected the Floo connection to be shut, after all. If Harry was here, if he deigned to speak in the first place, then…

"Yes, I want your trust," Draco said. "I want you to—not sleep with Muggles anymore when you're dating me. I want your fidelity. I want your permission to come and talk to you, and hold you, and give you more lessons in kissing and other things as you want them."

"And what do I get in return?" Harry tilted his head to the side until Draco was reminded of some of the owls he'd had in the past. "Your promise to listen to me rather than your gossiping friends? Your patience? _Your _trust?"

"Of course," Draco said, blinking at him.

That made Harry stop, with his hand braced on the mantle. Draco gaped at him. Had he had a lover who had decided that Harry had to be patient and faithful and trusting but they didn't have to be? Or was it for some other reason that he had decided Draco wouldn't be willing to do anything for him in return?

_Maybe not reason. Maybe just experience._

Draco cleared his throat. "I don't know what kind of reassurance I can give you," he said, cast back on honesty again, and the fact that he shouldn't have listened to Daphne. He couldn't help being disgusted by all the sleeping around Harry had done, but he could and should have thought it through instead of marching off to Harry to confront him about something a known liar had said. "Can I give you anything? Is there any promise that you would trust me to keep if I made it? Because, if not, I think you're right and this has to end."

* * *

_What makes you think that it hasn't already ended? _

But Harry bit back the furious snap he wanted to give. Instead, he held his breath for a few seconds, until the heat of his anger had calmed a bit and he didn't think he would breathe flame on Malfoy for asking.

If Malfoy wanted to come back and try again, if his own disgust didn't control him the way it had with Ginny and Frank and Veronica and all the rest…

Harry didn't think he _owed _him the chance. He had already paid what he owed. He'd trusted Malfoy, and look what it got him. His past was too much for anyone to face, just the way he'd always thought it would be. The only difference was that he had thought it was his weakness against the Dursleys that would drive Malfoy away, or the memories of the war, and instead it was Harry's defense against being celibate or hurting anyone.

But perhaps he owed _himself _something more. If he wanted a wizard lover—and he did—Malfoy was still probably the best choice. Harry could remember the warmth in his arms, and the way Malfoy had shifted aside for him without complaining, and the way he had touched the circular scar on Harry's ankle and not flinched away from it. Maybe the acid that had scarred Harry's face had played no part in this fight.

And Malfoy had _apologized _for doubting him.

Harry couldn't remember the last time he had received one of those from someone who wasn't Ron or Hermione.

Harry leaned heavily on the mantle for a second, and then straightened up. "I want you not to listen to Daphne Greengrass again," he said. "At least for as long as we're dating. If she comes to your office, send her away. If she tries to send you an owl, tear it up. That was what caused the trouble in the first place. And even though she won't be lying as effectively again, I would still prefer it if you stayed away from her."

"Why won't she be lying as effectively again?" Malfoy asked, picking up on what was probably the least important thing in the whole speech, the way Malfoy did.

_Or maybe he's putting off making the promise. _But Harry had decided. If Malfoy couldn't promise to stop listening to someone he _knew _was out to get them both, then he was an idiot that Harry couldn't be bothered with.

"Because I cast a spell on her that will make her say what she _really _thinks when she tries to gossip," Harry said.

Malfoy gaped at him for a second, and then laughed quietly. Harry, who had braced for an attack because Malfoy was Greengrass's friend, relaxed a little. Either Malfoy wasn't feeling as much friendship for her anymore, or he could appreciate Harry's action no matter what he thought about her.

"I see," Malfoy said, and his eyes gleamed a little. "Then I make the promise."

"So easily," Harry couldn't help muttering.

"Look," Malfoy said, and seemed to enlarge the image floating in Harry's fireplace even though it was just his head there, "I made a mistake. I was an idiot in some ways, I agree. But I've fought pretty hard, and I'm going to fight harder still. I could go off and find someone who was easier to date."

"Then why don't you?" Harry had to ask. He knew that Malfoy wanted Harry to acknowledge him in some way, but even this rejected relationship was more acknowledgment than most people had got from Harry in years. That ought to have been enough to satisfy him, really.

"Because now I've taken this on, and I want to conquer it, and I want _you_," Malfoy said. "The man I held in my arms the other day. The man who trusted me enough to relax."

Harry grunted. "You know it might be a while before you get him back again."

"I know," Malfoy said. "But I don't think it's impossible, and I'd like to try again."

Harry thought about it. Really, the more he thought about it, what _did _he have to lose? He already knew that he was still in control of the situation, enough to drive Malfoy away if he had to. If Malfoy abandoned him, it was no worse than going through the same situation with anyone else.

The remaining, horrid possibility was that he might hurt Malfoy.

But…

And Harry felt the smile creeping its way across his face without his permission. He had done that this afternoon, hadn't he, and without remorse? When he thought Malfoy was rushing around clinging to his precious prejudices like a pompous pure-blood, then Harry had manipulated him and flung those prejudices in his face. Maybe _because _it was Malfoy, he had been less concerned about what would happen to him as a result.

It was marvelously freeing, to have a lover whose mental safety he wasn't worried about every minute. And Malfoy might like it, too, since it would stop that behavior from Harry that he had called patronizing.

"All right," Harry said. "A chance. Void if I find out that you've talked to Greengrass in _any _way."

Malfoy nodded. And being Malfoy, he pushed. "How will I know when I have the level of trust from you that I had before?"

"When I call you Draco again," Harry said, and shut down the Floo connection on Malfoy's astonished face.

And there was so little pain in his mind and soul that he thought he could go to bed.


	9. Charity

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Charity_

"You want to go out?"

Harry didn't look up from the table he bent over. He'd brought home one report with him, since he had it almost finished. "You object to that?"

"No! Merlin, no." Malfoy mumbled the last words, as if he had thought the last one might be too loud a shout.

Harry turned, propping himself on the table with both hands as he shook his head at Malfoy. Malfoy sighed and touched his robes as though the silver-grey material would have turned suddenly rough. "I'm not sure that I'm appropriately dressed to go out, though," he finished.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Is that a torturous effort to pull some compliment out of me? You don't need _me _to tell you you look good." It was true. The grey material was delicate enough to sparkle in the dim lights of Harry's kitchen, but deep enough that it didn't make Malfoy look washed-out. His hair even had a subtle glow like gold when he turned the right way. Harry could imagine the yearning looks that would come his way if he walked into some of the Muggle clubs.

He could imagine, even better, the look that would appear on Malfoy's face if Harry asked him to go to those Muggle clubs. He hid a wince, and continued, "I don't think I would like the Sapphire Rose again, but something of that quality."

Malfoy was stuck on an earlier point in the conversation, though. "It's true that people compliment me all the time. But those people aren't you. And I think that's worth some extra effort." He turned so he had his back to Harry, and then angled his head over his shoulder. "Pansy used to tell me I looked _devastating _looking back at someone like this. What do you think?"

Harry had to clear his throat and lick his lips before he responded. "A good word, yeah."

Malfoy's smile deepened. "Good," he said, and spun back around. "As it happens, I know a restaurant I think you'll like. Very exclusive. You can only eat there if you're introduced by an existing member of the organization, and invitations are guarded." He held out a steady hand. Harry tucked his into the crook of Malfoy's elbow, and they walked out the door.

And Harry let it happen, because even though he didn't _need _the luxuries that Malfoy seemed inclined to shower him with, he liked them and recognized how hard Malfoy was working to court him. He might as well let it happen.

* * *

Draco kept his eyes on the restaurant door they had appeared in front of, not on Harry, because he knew that Harry must have had enough people gaping at him in the past not to relish it now.

But damn, it was _hard, _especially when Harry wasn't on his mettle and seemed to have let a few of his barriers down again. And that despite his lack of declaration of trust in Draco.

Harry wore a casual sort of dress robe tonight, not trimmed with lace or gold or silver but more than appropriate for dining. They were a deep scarlet, but suited him well enough that Draco couldn't find it in himself to taunt Harry about echoing Gryffindor House colors. Harry also seemed unconscious of the acid scars on his face and earlobe now, which Draco hoped came from realizing that they weren't anywhere near as big or devastating as they must have felt when the acid landed.

Then Draco caught a glimpse of Harry in the mirrored doors of the Cloth of Gold, and grimaced a little. Harry wore _glamours, _that was why. The tiny silver spots beneath his left eye and on his cheek had gone. Draco couldn't see the earlobe right now, since Harry's hair hung in the way, but he was willing to bet it was the same.

"You don't need to hide," he murmured to Harry as he opened the door for him, heart so full that he let the words spill over instead of damming them up as he had thought he would do until he and Harry were a little easier around each other.

"Hide?" Harry turned back to him, eyes as direct as a slap. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The scars." Draco took his right hand, and yes, although he could feel the sharp shapes of the letters, they were hidden again. "No one who looks at you will notice them, not against the famous one and your robes."

Harry smiled at him and took his hand back, with a seemingly casual motion that latched his sleeve back down his arm and let Draco notice a few other small marks that weren't there anymore. "It doesn't matter what you think," he said. "Or other people, for that matter. What makes _me _comfortable is what I care about."

Draco opened his mouth to say that hiding the scars came directly from what Harry's lovers in the past had thought, and then sighed and shut it. If he was going to keep this romance moving, then he couldn't let every little snag along the way make him lose his temper.

"But do keep talking about it, if you like," Harry murmured, moving through the mirrored hall that the Cloth of Gold sent arching and burrowing down into the cavern that housed the main restaurant. Harry neither seemed to look at or avoid his reflection, and Draco blinked. Most people he had brought here gaped or turned their heads away too obviously.

_Of course, how long does he spend looking into mirrors to develop the bloody glamours? _

"It lets me know exactly how soon I should reject you."

Draco caught Harry's elbow before he could open the last door into the Cloth of Gold, which was surrounded by a gilded frame like a mirror but was completely opaque, dark and gleaming like night ice. "I am _trying _here," he hissed into Harry's ear. "Which is more than I can say about you right now."

Harry turned to him and studied him patiently enough that Draco's hand itched to slap him. He held it back, though, with an effort. He would gain nothing if he let Harry anger him into reacting hastily. So he stood there smiling hard enough to hurt his teeth, and his grip on Harry's elbow tightened with the same force.

"You _are _going to cost yourself more than you know," Draco whispered. "More than you can afford to pay."

"I don't understand what this is," Harry said, standing limp in front of him, not clenching his hand or ripping his arm away to get free of Draco's grip, doing nothing but look at Draco's chin, as though that was the most interesting part of him at the moment. "Blackmail? A threat? You haven't told me what I'm going to lose yet."

Draco wanted to scratch Harry's skin with his nails, just to see if he would bleed. He took his hand back with an effort that made it shake. "I mean that you're going to cost yourself someone who could truly love you," he said. "And companionship, and togetherness, and all the other things that you told me you valued and went looking for."

Harry shook his head a little. "But I gave up on having them. That means that I'm taking a _risk _by continuing to look for them. I don't think it's a sure thing. I know I can get along without them." He reached out and gently poked a finger into Draco's chest. "You're the one I think is taking a risk that might end up being unacceptable to him."

"And what exactly is that?" Draco caught Harry's finger and wondered what scars hid under the mask of skin.

"Losing." Harry handed him one more smile and ducked through the door Draco didn't remember holding open.

Draco closed his eyes. Harry was right about one thing, at least. He didn't want to lose.

And the Cloth of Gold was no place to walk into with his temper burning. There were too many fragile ornaments here to wreck, too much that was pretty to smash, and he had to look at the most beautiful thing of all walking in front of him, as unconscious of his beauty as any framed picture on the walls. More unconscious, in a lot of cases. Some of those portraits could move.

_I want this. But damn, it's hard._

* * *

Harry, looking around, had to admit that the Cloth of Gold did look like the place that Malfoy might bring a date.

Which made it all the more ridiculous that he was here, substituting for the pretty person who should have leaned on Malfoy's arm.

Harry sighed and paced slowly up the circular steps that led from the lower rank of tables onto the dais, where Malfoy had assured him they would sit. He was here. He might as well enjoy what he could and absorb the blows.

The predominant color of the restaurant was gold, of course, but there were other, deeper shades, too, and the flaring torches on the walls and the ranks of mirrors contrived to make them look like illuminations that Harry had sometimes seen in medieval manuscripts he'd helped to seize in the course of his job. Here a dusky red, there a leaping golden hound in the tapestries that didn't look much like a real dog. And the tables were made of raised cloth of gold and sometimes cloth of silver, and the chairs were thrones. Eating here would be like eating in a palace.

Harry half-smiled. The Dursleys would say some interesting things if they could see him now. For that matter, Frank would say interesting things.

And…

Harry nearly closed his hand around the stem of a delicate goblet set out on the table near his plate, but managed to retract it in time, and nearly tear the tablecloth instead. Draco, who had drawn out his chair for him, hovered over his shoulder, glancing around. Of course he had noticed those slight indications that Harry was near losing his temper, Harry thought, angrier than he should be. Frank never would have.

He _needed _to stop thinking about Frank.

"What is it?" Draco murmured into his ear.

Harry swallowed the dryness in his throat and tilted his head back. "Nothing," he said, and knew it was too bright when Draco's eyes narrowed in on him as though they would pierce his tongue. He shook his head. "I had something in my throat, that was all. And I think I should thank you. This place is lovely."

"Isn't it?" Draco stepped back slowly, circling to his own chair like a predator. "I wanted to spoil you."

That was true, but from the heavy way Draco's eyes rested on him, he was more interested in what lay behind Harry's "Nothing."

Harry took up the strip of tapestry that lay in front of him, the images of heavy trenchers and tables showing the dishes and functioning as a menu. He had slipped into thinking of Malfoy as Draco again, and he didn't like that. Of course, it had happened when he saw that reflection in a mirror, but that didn't matter. Malfoy wouldn't always be here to protect him. No one would. Harry had had to learn to dispense with the protection of his friends, and he was going to do the same thing with the protection of his sometime lover.

"Thank you," Harry repeated, and glanced down at his tapestry. He found what looked like a whole wheel of cheese and some clustered red berries and circled it with a fingertip. "This." The circle he'd made blazed, a newer thread on the ancient weave, and then vanished. It would transport the message to the kitchens, Harry knew. "What about you?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Draco—Malfoy—looked like a king sitting there, his head encircled by the golden serpent on the back of the throne. Harry shrugged with his hands up. "Take your time."

"I think I will," Malfoy murmured, and then watched Harry while his hands traced seemingly random patterns on the tapestries that spread across the table. Now and then, he would reel a new strip of cloth down the table, but it never seemed that he chose. Harry would have screamed at him—

Except that the tactic was probably designed to make him scream. For some reason, knowing that made him relax. He even smiled at Malfoy, which made him frown and circle something he didn't even look at. Harry had to shake his head as the magic shook itself and sped off. "I hope you like whatever you ordered."

"All the food at the Cloth of Gold is good," Malfoy said dismissively, and folded down his tapestry. His gaze on Harry was intent as he picked up his own goblet and took a sip of the water inside. "A mirror. You were looking at a mirror."

"What? To perfect the glamours?" Harry didn't have any problem saying that aloud. People had looked at him and then away when he came into the restaurant, probably because the Cloth of Gold had rules about staring, but it was enough for them to know he was Harry Potter. They were more likely to assume that it was a different kind of glamour than ones that hid his scars. "Of course I did. No one achieves that level of skill without it, and I don't care _what _the books you bought may have told you."

He started to sip his own water, but Malfoy reached out and covered Harry's hand with his. "You saw something that nearly made you ill when we first came in," he murmured. "You were looking into the mirror. You saw _someone_." He turned around, in a slow scan. "If Daphne's followed us here, then I'll teach her respect with a sharper spell than you used."

Harry shook his head. "She wouldn't come here without finding something to counteract my spell, and that'll take a while." He knew that Malfoy hadn't spotted the person Harry had seen, because currently they were approaching the table at an angle, from behind Malfoy's chair.

"It's strange to see you out with a wizarding date, Harry," said that person in a soft voice, moving around the table to watch Harry with eyes that seemed more fathomless than ever.

Harry took a deep breath. Well, he had decided that he could survive this, couldn't he? And if his past and his present fell in love at first sight and fucked, then that would solve one of his problems. "Hello, Frank."

* * *

Draco felt a great shock pass through him, as though someone had shot a crossbow bolt up his arse through the bottom of his chair. He turned halfway around to regard the man.

His first thought was, _How did someone like him aspire to become Harry Potter's lover? _

Oh, Draco had no fault to find with his looks, although he was thinner than Draco usually preferred. But he had a—a _chiding _look to his eyes, that was the only way Draco could describe it. He had it now, in the way he shook his head at Harry. He had it in the way he folded his hands behind his back, as if he was giving a lecture to demonstrate Harry's inadequacy. And there was an ocean of quiet that was spreading around them, which Draco hated. That meant they would draw attention, and other people might hear what shouldn't be heard.

"Out with a wizarding date," Frank repeated. He glanced at Draco, and seemed to take him in and include him with a little tilt of his head that shut Harry out. "I can only surmise that you haven't told him the truth."

"One of the first things I did was cast a charm that made my clothes transparent and showed him all my scars."

Frank turned and looked at Harry, startled. So did Draco. Harry sat there, holding his goblet and sipping. His smile was hard, and he was bright and glittering and jeweled. He was using his walls again, to crowd Frank and shut him out, to deny that he had a hold on Harry's heart.

Draco was almost content to sit back and watch Harry destroy Frank. But he knew the pain it would cause Harry, inside, where no one could see. He didn't want to witness that.

"So?" Frank said, and the chiding look was back in his eyes. "Scars don't matter much. Does he know about the way you treat people?"

"I know," Draco said. "I understand that he has you to thank for that."

Frank turned to face him fully now, and there was a tugging at the side of his mouth now, as though he understood for the first time that Draco didn't mean his words. "What? You mean he's still trying to punish and coerce people into having sex with him? I _did _think that I had fixed that. Have you tried to have sex with him and suffered for it? I'm sorry."

Draco wanted to fling the goblet in his face, or take out his wand and do something more permanent. Frank didn't understand, that was clear. He thought he was being _kind_. He thought that revealing the "truth" about Harry was more important than doing it in private, or wording it obliquely, or doing anything but driving straight ahead.

And this was the man who had been Harry's lover.

"No," Draco said. "What I've suffered from is your convincing him of many things that aren't true." He did wave his wand then, but to lift a Privacy Dome shimmering above the table. "You were the one who convinced him that he raped people, didn't you?"

Frank blinked. "Not raped. I never used that word. I did make it clear that sex with him wasn't enjoyable. Never the fucking."

Draco turned to Harry. He sat immobile across the table, his hand on his own goblet. He met Draco's eyes, and there was nothing there, any more than there had been when Draco first firecalled him the other night.

_I wonder if he learned that lesson from Frank, as well? _With no clear guidance from Harry on how he wanted him to react, Draco turned back to Frank and chose his own course. It could not be a duel or a spell, not here in a public restaurant where some people had seen Frank approach them unharmed, and where some had heard them speak before Draco raised the Privacy Dome.

It would have to be words.

Draco smiled. He would enjoy that.

* * *

Harry, suspended in the middle of his own mind, the way he had chosen to react and the thickness of his walls surrounding him, was surprised to see Draco smile. Why would that happen, when he had almost surged out of his seat at Frank before?

_Because he agrees with him. _

Harry nodded a little. He could understand. Draco had been able to despise Frank and the rest of them as long as he never met them, but when he knew who they were, when he saw how reasonable and handsome and _normal _they were, then he didn't have a choice.

Well. Harry only had to sit here and smile, and keep himself from being hurt any further by this entirely expected occurrence. He wondered idly when Frank would have had enough and would go away. If he had come only to tell Draco the truth, Draco's words of agreement might be enough to get him to leave.

_Malfoy, _Harry reminded himself with a sigh. He thought he was strong, but how strong could he be when he kept forgetting his resolve to call Draco by his last name? Weak, pathetic, that's how he was. That's why he needed to be kept away from anyone who wanted him for more than his mouth.

Draco spoke. It took Harry a moment to follow the words, because they didn't fit into the space he had created for them in his mind already.

"I wouldn't know," Draco said. "As we've done nothing but go slow, and I'm undoing the damage that you did to him."

Frank paused and blinked. Harry knew the way those blue eyes narrowed when he was puzzled, and they were doing it now. For that matter, Harry would have looked the same way if he hadn't already sealed up his emotions. Draco was telling the truth, but why? Why not agree with Frank, if he thought he deserved the truth, and be done with it?

"What damage?" Frank asked.

Draco cocked his head to the side and looked Frank up and down, the kind of slow, steady appraisal that Harry knew would piss Frank off. He liked to do it to others, but hated having it done to him. He had explained it to Harry once: _Frank _needed time to get to know people, because he was a little slow, but Frank himself was all honest, all on the surface, and people should know what they were getting when they looked at him.

"You have no idea," Draco whispered. "Well. I'll answer, but that's because I think it won't hurt Harry to hear it spoken aloud. I'm sure he's said worse to himself."

Frank sighed and nodded to Harry. "He has, but that's because he has the courage to face that he's bad in bed, once someone tells him the truth."

"You made him think he was so ugly no one would want him," Draco continued, unflinching. "You made him think that he'd hurt you and hurt you and hurt you again, and didn't have the courage to admit it to himself, when in truth, _you_ were the coward for not telling him because that would inconvenience you. Either that, or the sex wasn't as horrible as you pretended it was, because you kept coming back for more."

Frank stared. Then he said, "I was trying not to hurt him—something I don't think _you _understand."

Draco gave him a shining smile. "Why do you care? When you've decided that Harry is the monster who hurts everyone he touches, and I'm the innocent victim?"

Frank appeared flummoxed by that. He darted another glance at Harry, who met it and didn't look away. He didn't know how to read what was in Frank's eyes, but then, there were many things he hadn't understood. How he could hurt Frank and not see the disgust and pain before he expressed them. How he had never spotted Frank's relief when he hid his scars, or revulsion when he displayed them. How he hadn't known that the reporters that followed them were something Frank hated; Frank had sometimes talked to them, sometimes ignored them, and in general, treated them with an amused contempt that Harry had admired and tried to imitate.

"He's someone who hurts people," Frank finally conceded. "But now that he knows it, I don't think we have to keep emphasizing it."

"You were the one who walked up to us," Draco said, stirring his finger around the rim of his goblet. "You made up your mind about who was the monster and who was the victim before you spoke. Are you changing it now?"

"I—I only wanted to make sure that you knew." Frank was holding himself stiffly upright by clasping his hands together behind his back. Harry had done the same thing himself before, and wondered now if it was a trick he had borrowed from Frank. The thought made him want to spit. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have interfered in a private date. I'll leave now."

He stepped back, but the edge of Draco's Privacy Dome, which spread over the table and arched into the floor, stopped him. Draco didn't show any sign of wanting to remove the Dome, either. He looked at Frank attentively and cocked his head. "You thought that Harry didn't deserve to date a wizard," Draco murmured. "That was obvious enough, by what you said to him when you came up. Don't you think we should discuss that?"

Frank had had a chance to settle himself, though, and Harry could have told Draco that it was useless debating with him when he had done that. He tilted his head back with a haughty sniff and flare of his nostrils, and shook his head. "No," he said. "I am sorry for any distress that I may have caused you. I spoke from the pain that Harry caused me in the past, without considering that you might have a stronger constitution than I did. Please let me go now."

"No," Draco said, his smile becoming so much like the teeth of a trap that Harry had to blink a little. "You caused the pain and distress that you're talking about to Harry, not to me. I want to hear you apologize to _him_."

Frank turned around and stared. Harry met his eyes, and still said nothing. He wasn't sure that he had control of his expression any longer, or at least not around someone as perceptive as Frank had always been; maybe he would see into Harry's heart. But he could control his voice.

"You don't deserve one," Frank whispered. "You must know you don't. The way you hurt people…"

Harry found his voice. He knew he wouldn't have if he'd been alone; he would have bowed his head and let Frank's praise or blame rain down on him unchallenged. Or, more likely, Frank would have said nothing at all. Harry being alone was the natural state of things, and he had contented himself with only the nods or the glances that told Harry he still hadn't healed from what had happened between them.

But someone was with Harry who thought Frank was in the wrong, and he hadn't understood before how much blue sky that would open up for him, how much he would feel as though someone had lifted him and placed him on a height.

"Why didn't you tell me the first time I hurt you?" Harry asked. "Instead of keeping silent and expecting me to read your mind?"

"Because I was trying not to hurt your feelings!" Frank brought one fist down on the table. He seemed to have forgotten about Draco, who was watching with his eyes so narrow Harry couldn't make out any color in them. "How many times do I have to say that? Yes, you were bloody awful in bed, but I only told you that when you _asked _me!"

Bells sounded in Harry's head, old ones, over a year old, telling him that what Frank said was the truth, and Harry couldn't have asked for a more considerate lover. But he pressed ahead. "Subjecting you to the sight of the scars was a horrible thing for me to do, though. Almost a crime."

"Now you're twisting my words." Frank rested both hands on the table and gave Harry a pitying smile. "I never said that. I did make it clear that your scars made me uncomfortable, yes, and you have to respect that." He glanced at Harry's right hand, and blinked, as though he had thought Harry would come out in public with the Blood Quill scar visible.

Harry didn't dare look at Draco. "But why didn't you tell me the first time you saw them? You said that you'd suffered in silence, but if your pain was so great, you could have _told _me, and then I wouldn't have hurt you so much."

"I didn't want to hurt your feelings."

Harry gestured around him at the Cloth of Gold, and the staring eyes that he knew still sought them behind the Privacy Dome, although they would see nothing but a violent shimmer of silver now. "Coming up and accusing me of bad fucking and not having the right to date another wizard in public doesn't hurt me?"

Frank took a long, slow breath. "I only cared about not hurting your feelings before you asked me for honesty. Then I had to be honest."

"But you tried to get out of this confrontation by implying that you cared about Harry's feelings _now_." Malfoy's voice was quiet, his hands folded in front of him as if he was watching a play. "So which is it? You hate him enough to accuse him of being a bad lover in front of an entire restaurant, or you care enough about him to want to escape a confrontation?"

"A man can mean many things," Frank said. "A _person _can mean many things, and change, and not mean them the next year." He was looking at Harry, and Harry had to admit it was the most direct look he had got from him in a long time—the only one that didn't imply he was seeing Harry as a constant source of suffering. "I wouldn't say those things the same way now, if we were dating and you asked me."

"And I've changed, too." Harry was smiling. He didn't know when that had happened, but he wasn't inclined to stop it, at the moment—especially because Frank had locked his hands together behind his back again, and that made him feel _good_. "I've decided that I don't want to see you anymore. Leave."

"I have as much right to be here as you have," Frank said, his voice so low that Harry thought at first he had decided not to speak. "More, since I can _legitimately _invite friends that take up several tables."

Harry winced. Frank had also been the one to make him aware of how much of the offers of casual friendship from the Aurors around him were based on his fame—how people only wanted to eat with Harry or go out for drinks with him if they were somewhere highly public, where people would see them being friends with _the _Harry Potter. It had helped him shed a lot of false friends who would probably spread gossip about him to the papers, but it had left him rather short of people to go somewhere with, except for Ron and Hermione.

Draco moved on the other side of the table. Harry looked over and saw Draco gazing straight at him, his eyes so furious that it looked like it must hurt, to contain that much emotion. Harry opened his mouth to ask what had irritated him.

And then Draco spoke.

* * *

It was happening again. Draco could see it. Harry was sinking back under Frank's influence, looking at him with that helpless sheen in his eyes, as though he didn't have the common sense or the magic to make Frank back off if he wanted.

But more than that, Draco could see why it _worked _for the bastard. He presented himself as someone honest, who just wanted Harry to see what harm he'd done so that he could get better. Probably believed it, too. It was easier than believing that he'd hurt Harry on purpose and for no reason, which was the _real _truth.

Draco had had enough of both of them.

"Did Harry ever apologize to you for what happened between the two of you?" he asked Frank.

Frank turned to him at once. He had been focusing on Harry with the kind of hunger that Draco had last seen in Daphne. He was sure Frank would deny it if Draco asked, but it was there, nonetheless, the sharp appetite for more of Harry's pain.

"Yes, he did," Frank said. "Too late, of course."

Draco nodded. "What else should he have done?"

He got a long, slow, considering glance from those blue eyes, as though Frank thought he was someone who wasn't a native speaker of English. "Not caused the harm in the first place, obviously," Frank said at last.

He had tried to drawl. Draco couldn't laugh, or he would lose his advantage. "But he didn't know, because you wouldn't tell him."

"I was trying to spare him—"

"Now you aren't," Draco said, cutting off that line of argument before it could get started, because it was likely to have too much effect on Harry. "And he's caused the harm, and it can't be undone. And he's apologized. What else do you _want _from him? What else can he do that would make up for what he did?"

Frank shook his head as though he didn't understand the question. But ice had rimmed his eyes over, and Draco would have lifted his goblet to him in different circumstances. _Now you're recognizing the real enemy, aren't you?_

"Nothing," Frank said. "Nothing can make up for it. I'll have to live with the memory of those awful months for the rest of my life."

"If nothing can make up for it," Draco said, dripping the words gently into the silence that followed, "then why come up to him in places like this? Why keep reminding yourself of what happened? Why not try to stay away from him and give yourself time to heal that way?"

Frank looked at the Privacy Dome overhead, and then outside it, as though rescue might come from that direction. Draco knew it wouldn't. The Cloth of Gold prided itself on its discretion. They would get their food eventually, but the wizards who ran the restaurant would hold onto it, and heat it, as long as the spell was over their table.

"I can't heal," Frank said. "I have to make sure that other people know about it and don't get into the same kind of trouble I did—"

"Which doesn't accord well with your statement about not wanting to hurt Harry's feelings a little while ago," Draco murmured. "No. Shall I tell you why you come back?"

Frank raised an eyebrow. "If you want to try, without knowing me."

He darted a quick little look at Harry. Draco didn't. He wanted to watch every minute of the crumbling of Frank's face, and his good opinion of himself, too, if Draco was lucky.

"You want to make sure that _Harry _never heals, either," Draco said softly. "You want to make sure he never dates anyone, never has any peace, never has a chance to forgive himself for what happened between you. How can he make up for what he 'did' to you? By staying alone and wallowing in guilt for the rest of his life. That's what revenge is to you. You don't ignore him, you don't stay away from him. You just want to make sure that he doesn't get any pleasure out of any relationship, because you didn't have any when you were with him. A rather petty and long-term revenge for someone who doesn't want to hurt Harry's feelings and was only being honest with him." Draco paused. "But perfect for the coward whose _pride _was so badly hurt that he wants the one who hurt it, who didn't live up to his _frankly _idiotic imaginings of a perfect hero, to suffer."

Frank's cheeks were pale, and he opened his mouth a time or two as though to speak, then closed it with a wet click. Finally, he stepped forwards and drew his wand.

"Don't."

Just the one word, but it was so piercing that Frank looked over his shoulder involuntarily. Draco looked with him, and saw Harry sitting with his wand pointing at Frank along the top of the table, his eyes so bright and empty that Draco thought he had shut all his emotions away behind walls again.

"I'm allowed to attack someone who insults me," Frank whispered.

"But I'm not," Harry said. His voice was passionless, but his wand didn't waver, and at the moment, Draco thought that was the important thing. "You said so. You can call me anything you want, and I can't strike back, because I hurt you so much already. I did something wrong once, so you're allowed to punish me for the rest of my life. But the same rule applies to you, then. If you hurt Draco, then he would get to punish you forever." Harry smiled at Frank, and Draco would have looked away if he hadn't wanted to keep utterly still and focused. "I'm saving you from making a mistake that would cost you for years. You ought to thank me."

"It doesn't work like that," Frank said. "You have no idea what you did to me."

"Explain it to me," Harry said. "Do you have nightmares? You're obsessed with the memories of the time we were together? You worry continually about who's going to hurt you next? You don't want to date again because someone might crawl into your bed and rape you? You can't relax around many people?"

"None of that," Frank said. "The manifestations are _subtler_."

"Rather than my crude, pathetic responses, I know," Harry said, nodding. "But you have to explain it to me."

"It's scars on the _soul_." Frank turned to Draco and recoiled a little when he realized Draco was still watching. "It's scars on the mind. It's long-lasting things, little glimpses and catches of my breath whenever I see you in the _Daily Prophet _or hear other people praising you. It's nothing you can make up for."

"Then the sight of me should affect you in an even worse way," Harry said, voice without passion again, face without his smile. "Why do you keep coming up to me and shaking your head at me?"

"Because even stronger than the desire to stay away from you is the desire to make sure that others are protected," Frank said. "You ought to understand that. You told me once it was the basis of your continuing as an Auror."

Harry winced. Draco winced in turn. That was the argument that might consume Harry. Draco didn't know what defenses he could have against it.

But in the end, Harry shook his head. "You also said when we were dating that you didn't know why I wanted to be a hero. You didn't want to. It was foreign to you. Did I also infect you with my hero complex?"

Frank tightened his muscles, all the way down his body. Draco wanted to laugh. _He really doesn't like having his hypocrisies noticed, does he?_

"You hurt me so badly that you changed me," Frank said. "And I want to make sure that no one else gets hurt like that again."

"Then you're too late," Harry said. "Veronica came after you, and she was also hurt. And Draco was." He glanced at Draco across the table, briefly. "I've tried to hurt him even further in the name of driving him away, but he won't have it. Tell me, Draco. You thought it was patronizing when I tried to care about your future pain. What do you say about Frank's longing to make sure you don't suffer?"

Draco smiled. He appreciated Harry handing the task of chastising Frank back to him, and not simply because he worried about what effect Frank's appeals would have on Harry. He folded his hands beneath his chin and gazed at Frank. Frank was avoiding his eyes now, looking at the edge of the table, but Draco didn't think it would be effective except for someone far away from them.

And since the Privacy Dome was still up, the effort was rather wasted.

"I think it's patronizing as all fuck," Draco said softly. "_More _than yours. You've been comparing me with your past lovers, which was a mistake, but natural. Frank can't compare me with anyone except himself, since his _subtle _reaction to you is so personal and internal. He doesn't know what I feel or think. And he doesn't give a shit. He's only doing this to hurt you."

Frank stared this time, still at the edge of the table. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said, but his voice was weak.

"Of course you don't," Draco said, and rolled his eyes for effect. He was unsure how effective it actually _was, _since Frank kept staring at the table, but that was part of the point. "You can lie to yourself and pretend that you care about everyone Harry 'hurts.' You can pretend your pain is worse than his. You can pretend that he doesn't deserve to get over this, that he should keep flogging himself with guilt for the rest of his life. But you can only keep doing that until you tell someone outside your mind about this and they laugh." He turned to Harry. "Do you think he's ever said this much to someone other than you? Of course not. He knows your vulnerabilities. If he's told this story to someone else, he would have to put a different spin on it, to keep from being laughed out of the room."

"_Conf_—" Frank began, his shoulders hunching as if he would fling himself forwards against restraints.

Harry didn't even bother casting his Disarming Spell out loud. Frank's wand simply left his hand and flew across the space between them to Harry, like a homing bird.

"You can attack me all you want," Harry said softly, when Frank whipped back to him. "I don't have a lot of defenses against you, and I hurt you. But you keep attacking other people. I don't see why I should allow that. I _am _an Auror, after all."

"Give me my wand _back_," Frank said, sneering at him. Draco studied his face and could only conclude that Harry must not ever have seen him in this mood when he first dated him. Otherwise, how could he think Frank was handsome? "If you're not going to arrest me, you don't have the right to keep it from me."

Harry smiled. "Such respect for the law when a moment ago you were about to attack someone unarmed." And he flowed to his feet. Draco didn't miss the way Frank backed up. He hoped that Harry didn't, either. "And I'll give it back. The instant you step beyond the edge of the Privacy Dome." He glanced at Draco. "If you wouldn't mind lowering it so he can get through, and then restoring it?"

Draco smiled and drew his wand, doing as Harry asked. And doing something else, too, although he cast the spell without his lips moving, so someone else would have a hard time proving it.

The Voiceless Voice Charm would wait until Frank was a safe distance away, and then begin to whisper in the back of his head. It would repeat the things Draco had said, and point out other things, other hypocrisies when he tried to paint himself as an innocent victim.

Because Draco knew Frank's kind; he'd been a member of that kind for a large portion of his life. Frank was convinced that he was special, that his pain was profounder than other people's, that the rules should never apply to him. If he was hurt, he had the right to take any revenge he wanted, but no one else should strike back at him. Because they weren't as special, and society only worked in a way Frank liked if _other _people obeyed the rules.

The Voiceless Voice Charm would only last a month, the most Draco could make it last. He thought it a fitting punishment for what Frank had done.

Because he was wrong, and no punishment should last forever.

* * *

Harry waited until Frank had backed five steps away from the table. Then he tossed him his wand, and made a show of wiping his palm off on his trousers.

He saw the deep, low flame that settled into the back of Frank's eyes. Having someone disgusting, or someone he thought was disgusting, do that, had to be hurtful.

Harry flicked his hand open and let the gesture go. His stomach squirmed. He wanted to breathe faster than he was doing right now. He wanted to go home and curl up and think about what Frank had said, and what he had done to him right now, in causing him more pain.

But all he could think about right now was the way Frank had turned on Draco with his wand out, and that shielded him like a wall against all the other thoughts bubbling in the corners of his mind.

Frank could attack Harry all he liked. Maybe he was justified. Maybe he should stay away for his own good. Harry knew he would have to think about that in more detail before he decided one way or the other.

But he had _no _right to attack Draco, the one who was in the same position he'd once been in, and whom he'd claimed he wanted to protect. He was being hypocritical and stupid and impulsive in doing that.

And maybe he'd been stupid in other ways, too, and Harry should think about those ways.

"You needn't think this is over," Frank said. He was speaking directly to Harry this time, quietly enough that Harry didn't think any of the craning listeners across the Cloth of Gold could hear. "I have a grudge to settle with you."

Harry licked his lips. "Then it's a grudge," he said. "And you should sue me or duel with me. You don't get to come up to me anymore and shake your head sadly when I'm dating, though. Not when you've attacked one of my dates."

Frank blinked and blinked and looked as though he had no idea what to say. Then he turned and stormed off.

Harry faced Draco again, to find him holding his goblet and studying Harry with the lively, open, relaxed face that Harry remembered from some of their other arguments. Harry smiled tentatively back.

"I'm glad that we saw him," Draco said. "I'm glad I could take a little bit of revenge for you."

Harry opened his mouth to say that Frank wasn't that bad, and then closed it again. He still didn't know what to say or think about some of the things Frank had done tonight. He wanted to say that Frank wasn't _evil, _but maybe it was more true that Frank didn't think of himself that way.

But the way he had drawn his wand on Draco was inexcusable. And the things he had said to Draco were, too. Harry was still allowed to care about pain to someone he was dating, even by Frank's rules. He had to be, or he couldn't care about what he'd done to Frank, either.

"Thanks, Draco," Harry said, and picked up his own goblet as a distraction. In the meantime, the food finally shimmered into place on their plates, just as the Privacy Dome rose again. Glad of that, too, Harry picked up his fork and made ready to eat.

He stopped, though, because Draco had come to life in the chair across from him. The line of his wrist stretching down to where his arm rested on the table looked like cord. He hunched as if he wanted to spring and protect Harry from some unseen danger. Even his legs and shoulders had gone still, and he made no effort to close his parted lips.

"What?" Harry asked slowly, wondering if he had done something else nasty without thinking. Then he winced. That was always the problem, wasn't it? Everything he had done _was _thoughtless.

Draco only shook his head, though, and Harry finally could name the tension that had flooded his body: wonder. He picked up his goblet, moistened his lips, and finally seemed ready to close his mouth. "You called me Draco," he whispered. "And you said the other night that you weren't ready to do that yet, and that I would know you'd forgiven me when you did." He cocked his head to the side, and let his eyes ask the question, maybe because he'd run out of words.

Harry swallowed and gripped the side of his plate for a second. Then he picked up his fork and began to eat, chewing slowly, trying to savor the taste of the food and think of an answer to Draco's implied question at the same time.

Draco didn't look as though he cared about waiting. The wonder was in his face like pain, and he didn't eat. Maybe he didn't think his stomach could handle it.

Harry finally swallowed and said, "I don't know that I would have called you that if we hadn't met Frank tonight. So, in a way, you owe it to him."

Draco didn't flinch or back away the way Harry thought he would have at a test like that. He smiled. "I know. But I got a chance to show you that I can protect you in return, and that I hate it whenever _anyone _tries to make decisions about what would hurt me, not just you. Does that help?"

He sounded so hopeful that Harry had to smile. "Yes, it does," he said. "It's just—I'm not as upset with you as I was anymore, but I don't know that we're back to the same level we were before our argument. I just don't want you to be disappointed if you try to hold me and it takes me a while to relax."

Draco reached out, slowly, as though he would startle a bird into flight if he moved any faster. Harry let him come, rolling his eyes, but only internally, at Draco's speed. He supposed it seemed warranted, after the way he'd reacted.

"I could be disappointed, but I won't blame you," Draco said, stroking Harry's fingers from the knuckles to the tip, gently, over and over again. "I think you've had enough of your lovers blaming you wholly for things that were partially their fault, and also enough of hiding everything from you and then springing it on you all at once. I won't do that."

Harry swallowed. "Thank you."

Draco smiled at him and pulled his hand back, and resumed eating. Harry did the same thing, still slowly. He kept stretching out and expecting something to hurt, and nothing did.

Maybe it would, later, when he got home and had the chance to think about Frank's words, and the ways he could have avoided hurting him, and the things he could have done better. It had always been the regrets that had hurt Harry the most, the things he could no longer change.

But so much of what Draco said made _sense. _And so much of what Frank did didn't.

Draco began to speak, idly, of some of the potions he had done lately in the Potions Division, and tell Harry stories about his stupid apprentices. Harry could laugh and listen and not talk much, and so it was no surprise that he didn't recognize the trembling sensation in his mind until the end of the meal.

Another wall falling.

_We could fuck up but try again. Fucking up doesn't ruin it forever, unless both people decide it's ruined forever._

Harry caught his breath. Draco promptly stopped in the middle of the story, and waited. Harry held out his hand to him and just squeezed it, once, then dropped his own hand back to his side.

He didn't want to discuss his thoughts with anyone right now. He wanted to enjoy the unaccustomed sensation of breathing free.


	10. Caution

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Caution_

"So, did you _really _confront Frank in a restaurant last night?"

Harry kept yawning and stretching on purpose, because he knew it would annoy Ron. Then he finally rolled over on the couch and looked at the Floo. "Why are you asking?" he said. "Gossip travels faster than I thought. And if you heard it, it must be true."

Ron rolled his eyes. "Don't be a berk. I know you would probably have told us, but we heard it first, from Hannah. Don't even ask me where she got it." He leaned forwards. "I just wanted to know the _details _from you."

Harry choked a little, and then laughed. "Of course. Not if it actually happened, because you were certain of that, but the _details_."

"Hey, I waited until ten to be sure you were up," Ron said. "Hermione would have just called you at eight."

That was probably true, Harry had to admit. He rolled over until he was lying on his stomach on the couch, with his arm dangling down the side. "Yes, _Draco_ and I confronted Frank in a restaurant last night. The Cloth of Gold. Draco paid," he added, because he knew that even in the midst of his eagerness to find out quite different details, Ron would wonder about that once he heard the restaurant's name.

"He might have the makings of a good partner for you after all," Ron said. Harry rolled his eyes in turn. "If you have someone rich to spoil you, you would be a fool not to take advantage of it."

"If I wanted to, I could have twice the amount of money Draco has by selling autographs and appearances at public events," Harry said.

"Yes, but you're too noble to do that," Ron said. "Therefore you don't have the money, therefore you might as well enjoy someone who does have it and is focused on you."

Ron-logic was impervious to mere human logical argument, so Harry abandoned the attempt and said, "Yeah. Anyway, it was nice. The place is beautiful. I did see Frank in a mirror briefly near the start of the evening, but I didn't think he would come up to me. He's always approached me before when I've been alone."

"He can't stand to see you happy," Ron said, in the confident tone he used to talk about Dark wizards' maps. "Of course he would come up."

"It was never as bad as that," Harry said. "He wanted me to be happy when I was with him."

"Yes," Ron said. "Because if you were unhappy, it might reflect poorly on him, since he was dating the _Hero _and should have glowing on his arm all the time. I know he got a few Howlers each time you went out and someone decided that you'd frowned during the meal or looked as if you'd bitten into a sour melon."

Harry flinched. He'd never known that. "No wonder he—"

"_Stop it_," Ron said. "I just told you that because I wanted you to know how utterly shallow he was, that he obsessed about the way you looked and acted when you were on dates with him as much as your crazier fans did. I didn't mean to make you feel sorry for him." He shifted a bit, and Harry thought he might have turned to look at someone beside him, but he went on talking directly to Harry. "You don't need to feel sorry for him. He didn't have the experience dating you that he wanted, and instead of breaking up with you or accepting that his dreams were unrealistic, he chose to shame you and make you feel as bad as possible."

Harry rubbed his face. He wanted to defend Frank, not so much because it was _Frank, _as because Harry knew what it was like to live with those kinds of Howlers, and he hadn't even known that Frank was getting them, and what kind of bad lover did that make him?

But he wanted to talk about last night more than he wanted to defend Frank, either, which might be a first. He decided to take advantage of it.

Sitting up, Harry said, "Frank decided that I didn't deserve a wizarding date, and he had to warn Draco about how I'd hurt him, in case I'd managed to lie to Draco so far." Ron nodded, his fingers visibly drumming on the hearth next to him. Harry grinned. "Draco didn't take that well. I mean, he doesn't when it comes from _me _and I'm worried about how much I'll hurt him. Can you imagine him caring what some random stranger thought of him?"

"Especially a stranger that he's already pissed at," Ron said, nodding again, this time wisely.

Harry blinked. "If he's a stranger, that removes him from the equation. I think most of Draco's animosities are personal. He doesn't have a reason to be angry at someone he's never met."

Ron heaved the kind of tremendous sigh that said it was his turn to educate Harry on something that should have been obvious, and he didn't enjoy it. "Listen, Harry. Frank was one of the bastards who inflicted the damage on you that Draco hates. It doesn't matter if he's a stranger personally or not. Of course Draco's going to hate him."

Blinking, stunned, Harry could only manage the rather weak retort of, "When did _you _start calling him Draco?"

"Go on," Ron said.

Harry talked about Frank's contradictions, how he said he wanted to save Harry but insulted him in front of a restaurant full of people, how he supposedly cared about Draco but then drew his wand on him. Ron cackled with delight the whole time, especially when Harry talked about Disarming Frank and driving him beyond the Privacy Dome.

It was a good thing that Harry had lived the action over and over in his head last night before he went to sleep and didn't need to concentrate to tell it, because his brain was somewhere else altogether.

He hadn't thought that Draco _hated _his past lovers. Disliked them, sure. Worried about them, maybe. Thought they had got to experience things with Harry that he hadn't due to Harry's lack of trust, of course.

But he hadn't anticipated Draco's jealousy over the random Muggles Harry gave pleasure to, and he hadn't anticipated this. Draco had enjoyed taking down Frank verbally last night; Harry knew he had. That wasn't the same as the sheer viciousness he thought Draco could bring to bear on someone if he hated them.

Harry bit his lip and decided that he needed to talk to Draco, as soon as possible. Accordingly, when Ron gave one last pleased chuckle and told him farewell, Harry threw Floo powder into the fire and called out, "Malfoy Manor!"

* * *

Draco scowled as the potion in the cauldron yet again dissolved into smoke and chaos. Not harmful chaos, or he wouldn't have been able to stand directly beside the cauldron lip and examine the remains, but one that meant _all _the liquid disappeared and drifted about the room as steam. He would have to start over, the way he didn't always have to when he simply had a ruined base.

A house-elf appeared in the doorway of the lab. Draco turned around. Perhaps it had been there for some time, but he had told the elves never to trouble him while he was brewing, after what they still referred to as 'Helga's Disappearing Footses.'

"Yes?" he snapped.

"Master Harry Potter is to be waiting in the fire!" the elf said, and kept bowing.

Draco shook his head. Given the way house-elves spoke, there was no way to be sure whether Harry had firecalled only once and then promised to call back, or whether he was still there, unless he asked.

And Draco didn't want to waste the time. He broke through the door of the lab, took the narrow left staircase, and came out in the dining room where he and Harry had eaten dinner together. That was the Floo he had left open to shuttle unexpected firecalls into.

And Harry's face floated there, calm but serious. Draco didn't think Frank had tried to contact him and harass him again, which was good in one way, but which would have afforded Draco the most amusement in trying to correct. "What is it?" he asked.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Thank you for the wonderful dinner last night, I had a good time, good morning, how was your night?" he said.

"You didn't firecall me to ask any of those things." Draco took a chair in front of the fireplace, then reconsidered and stood up again. He might need the room to pace. "What is it?"

"Do you—do you _hate _Frank and the others?" Harry asked. "I know you were jealous of the Muggles and you think Frank is stupid, but if you hate them, then you might do something more to them than I want you to."

Draco shut his eyes for a minute. Several things flew around behind his eyes that he could have put into words, but decided were too cruel to do so.

"Let me guess who told you that I hated them," he murmured, opening his eyes. "Weasley?"

"He was the one who put it like that," Harry said, his eyes wide and clear as he studied Draco. "But I was the one who decided that I'd better ask you and see. Because if you're going to take revenge on them, I'd prefer that you _asked _me first."

Draco relaxed a little. This was a better conversation than he had thought they would have, once they got onto the subject. "I've already been near Tobley, and although I despised her and did think that the majority of the things she said about you were foolish, I managed to avoid ripping her apart. It's Frank I find most objectionable. He was the one who first convinced you that you were a rapist and all the rest of it?"

"He's the one who first told me what he thought," Harry corrected, his face gone unreadable. "It was only later, through his words, that I thought back on some of the things my other lovers had said and done and realized they were probably thinking the same way."

"So you don't even _know_, not for certain," Draco said. "I think Frank fucked you up more than you'd acknowledge."

"Certainly according to you, he did." Draco got another direct, steady glance. "But as for the exact content of their thoughts, no, I can't know that. But horrified stares and flinches are pretty hard to miss. It was just that it took some time before I realized they were because of my scars and the way I'd hurt them."

Draco sighed. "Have you _talked _to any of the lovers before Frank since you broke up with them?"

"Ginny." Harry tilted his head back, as if meeting this like a personal challenge. "It's kind of inevitable, since we still share the same family."

Draco blinked, then nodded. It made sense that Harry would think of the Weasleys as his family, strange as it was for Draco, who had been taught so early and so often that only blood mattered, to contemplate. Harry hardly had any blood Potters left to relate to. "And has she said that you horrified her? Hurt her? Raped her?"

Harry's face flamed, although it took a slight shifting and deepening of the green in the flames to tell Draco that. "No. But she'll flinch when she sees my scars, and she gives me looks, sometimes, when we're discussing and laughing about the latest rumor that I'm a wonderful lover. She's telling me that we both know the truth is the complete opposite."

"Good God, you're going to make me sound like Granger."

Harry gaped at him. "What? Just asking questions doesn't make you sound like Hermione."

"No, it's because of what I'm about to say," Draco said, and shook his head. It was hardly the most unbelievable thing he'd done since he started dating Harry, but it was the _current _unbelievable thing, which made it feel harder to deal with. "I think the troubles between you and your previous lovers all started because of _lack of communication. _There. Is that Gryffindor enough for you?"

Harry didn't dismiss it at once, although his eyes flickered. Then he said, "I thought your problem with Frank was that he was _too _honest."

Draco snorted. "Having met the man? He'll say whatever makes him feel like the nice person, the right person. He'll pretend to care about your feelings and to care about rescuing people from you both in the same conversation, and not see the contradiction. He'll say that he's always nice, then say that he's always honest. That you can't be _both _escapes him, because his investment is in his image, not the feelings of others."

Harry shut his eyes for a long second. Draco wanted to say something, but again waited. Something about the way Harry's forehead was furrowed…

"So your real problem with him," Harry muttered, "is that he didn't talk about his feelings at all from the beginning. He just saved them up until the point where they could rush out and hurt me."

Draco couldn't help grinning like a fool, although Harry had his eyes closed and missed the expression. On the other hand, maybe that was a good thing right now. "Exactly. If he thought those things, he should have said them. And the way that he kept talking about how fucking _honest _he was…I had no patience with him."

Harry opened his eyes and nodded again. "All right. So—what? You think I should walk up to Ginny and demand to know exactly how terrible I was in bed? And where? The Burrow? Ron and Hermione are the only ones who know any details about this. Ginny and I both kept silent for the sake of not embarrassing her parents."

"You don't need to ask her," Draco said. "Unless you want to. You told me that your relationship with her is years over, and that you didn't part as badly from her as you did from some of the others, right?" Harry nodded, and Draco continued, with an inner sigh at having to voice truths that Harry should have come up with for himself. On the other hand, if he had, they wouldn't be here. "Then you can let things lie. _Unless _she catches sight of one of your scars and flinches," he had to add. Draco wasn't sure that he believed that had really happened; Harry simply thought everyone found him ugly, as witness the way he had showed Draco his scars on their first date. "Then I think you're within your rights to ask her what's wrong and not to do that around you."

Harry gave him a strange look. "Just like that?"

Draco tilted his head back, trying to imitate the strange look. "Just like what?"

"Just—march up to her and ask that?"

"_Yes_," Draco said. Merlin, he would be glad when he could stop being the Gryffindor here. "Why not? She flinches, you want to know why, you ask her. I thought that was the direct method Gryffindors always favored."

"I'm still a Gryffindor, but a lot different from what I used to be," Harry said, and took a deep breath. "Listen, can I come over?"

Draco almost _fell _over. He steadied himself with a grip on the back of the chair he had considered sitting down in earlier, and nodded. "Of course. Although I anticipate a boring day, where I'm going to be brewing a few different combinations of ingredients in an attempt to get this potion right."

"That's okay," Harry said. "I just want to be near you."

Draco had to close his own eyes this time, for a different reason. It was long moments before he could make himself nod and whisper, "Sure."

And then he reached out and opened the Floo to receive visitors, just as Harry stepped through.

* * *

Harry stumbled on the hearth, and flushed. He did that all the time. Frank would have made a cutting remark about it.

But Draco wasn't Frank, and Harry realized now how wrong he had been to assume he was—and how wrong it would be to start wallowing around and feeling guilty about that. Among other things, Draco wouldn't like it.

Draco didn't seem inclined to blame him for his stumble. He was surveying Harry, up and down, as though Harry had done something different with his hair or face since Draco last saw him, although Harry was (painfully) aware that he looked the same as always. Harry pressed down his hair a little and flushed again.

"You're _here_," Draco said. "Not somewhere else, making up excuses in your head as to why you have to leave."

Harry wouldn't let himself understand the full import of that. He knew it would hurt more than he was prepared to deal with, right now. He let Draco press his hand, instead, and then gradually draw him closer. Harry met his eyes and waited.

Draco kissed him.

It was slower and gentler this time than even during their lesson, and Draco's hand on his arm and arm around his shoulders restrained Harry when he would have plunged ahead out of sheer nervousness. He shut his eyes and let Draco guide the kiss instead, opening his mouth when Draco's tongue tapped at his lips, moaning a little when Draco squeezed his shoulders as though he wanted to hear the noise. When Draco ended the kiss and stepped back, Harry followed him with his lips for only a few seconds before he cleared his throat and opened his eyes, embarrassed.

Draco watched him intently, hands on his shoulders. Then he gave Harry the most intense smile he'd ever seen and turned to the far door out of the room. "Come, my lab awaits."

Harry moved after him, waving his hand in front of his eyes. Yes, his body still looked and felt solid. Yes, he was still in a place, in a world, where he could have a body and a kiss that tasted like _that_.

And now he was about to go and watch a lover experiment with a potion, a position that he would have said only six months ago he could never be in. His lovers would never be wizards again.

A thought crept into his mind that was small and soft and intertwined with some of the other ones there, until it sounded like someone whispering to him.

_I like this._

* * *

Draco cursed and moved back, casting a spell to make sure the fumes from the exploding cinnabar puffed up and away from the cauldron. He heard a noise from the corner where Harry watched, and glanced over to see him promptly delving back into the book he'd taken from the Manor's library.

"Did you say something?" Draco asked, taking a step towards him.

"Me? Say something?" Harry looked up at him and fluttered his eyes, placing one hand over his heart. "Of course not. I would never do that."

Draco snorted and turned towards the cauldron again. No matter how he thought about it, though, he couldn't understand what he was doing wrong. He wanted a potion that would allow someone to skip most of the steps in the Animagus study process, becoming an animal easily and simply, and transforming back the same way as long as the potion stayed in their body. But every combination of ingredients he had tried relating to transformation was unstable and blew up in his face.

"What are you trying to do?"

Draco started and turned to Harry. "Trying to make it simpler to become an Animagus," he said. "If you could drink a potion and transform, then you wouldn't have to spend years studying Transfiguration."

Harry shut the book and blinked at him. "But those years of study have a purpose," he said. "If anyone could become an Animagus on the first try, then it would mean that they could get trapped more easily as animals, and not understand how to change back."

"This potion would let them change back, too." Draco folded his arms. "Unless you thought I was stupid enough not to consider that."

Harry gave him a level look. "And how long would the potion last?"

"_If _I can get it to work the way I want it to," Draco said, and let his voice intone the words carefully, since Harry didn't seem to be listening, "then it would last two days. That ought to be enough to allow them to get used to the transformation, or escape from danger if they had changed into an animal just to do that."

"So they're going to brew the potion, drink it, and escape from danger?" Harry surveyed him skeptically. "Or were you thinking that they would drink the potion and then learn how to change on their own without it, eventually?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "They would carry the potion with them in a vial and drink it when they needed it, of course."

Harry sat up further. "And that would just restrict the potion to those who could afford it. Who would probably be criminals. And then we would have a bunch of criminal unregistered Animagi running around."

Draco had to laugh, and he had to sit down while he did it, especially because Harry was glaring at him and didn't seem to understand why Draco was laughing so hard. "When did _I _become the optimist?" Draco asked finally, wiping tears from his eyes. "Yes, it's possible that criminals would pay more for it and would use it more. But it's just as possible, since I work for the _Ministry, _that I would make sure the Aurors had as much as they wanted of it. And they wouldn't be normal Animagi, so I don't see why they should have to register."

"That's _worse_."

"Really?" Draco picked himself up and leaned forwards with interest. "And your friend Granger is fighting for werewolves to be allowed to skip registration, isn't she? And they truly _are _violent monsters once a month, while an Animagus isn't."

Harry raked his hand through his hair. "I've chased more Animagus criminals than you have," he muttered. "Excuse me for thinking that potion would be a nightmare."

Draco grinned. "You still have to convince me how it would be. Unless you think skipping straight to the fantasy of criminals having money is supposed to convince me. Yes, some criminals do have money. But a lot of them are stupid, and spend it on whatever their passions are. Plus, I would hardly sell the secret to the potion when I could make money selling the potion instead. So they would have to come to me, and I could keep track of my customers, and give the names to the Ministry if I wanted to."

Harry eyed him from under one lock of dark hair. Draco calmed a little as he watched him. He was just starting to realize how much he enjoyed _looking, _at least when Harry didn't strike up a calculated pose for effect or think Draco was staring at his scars. Harry was at his most alive and vital when least self-conscious.

Harry finally sniffed and dropped back into his chair. "All right. But it's a long process to become an Animagus, most of the time. You don't think that length of time is there for a reason?"

"Oh, of course," Draco said, a little surprised that Harry would ask that. "It's there because Transfiguration is one of the hardest branches of magic to master, and most wizards don't have the concentration to do nothing else for six months but train to become one. If they spent more time on it and only it, they would achieve it faster."

"No, I mean," Harry said, and raked his hand through his hair again. Draco grinned. This was becoming entertaining. "You don't think there's a _reason _for it? Not a—I don't know the word I want."

"Ah," Draco said, after thinking about it for a reason. "A moral dimension. Magic that's convenient and wonderful _should _be harder to practice, just like the Dark Arts _should _make someone into an insane criminal for using them. Is that what you mean?"

Harry nodded hard enough that that errant lock of hair flopped into his eyes. "I don't think that just anyone should be able to become an Animagus. People should have to practice hard at it, and if they don't practice hard enough or they're not good at it, then they shouldn't get rewarded for it anyway."

"I find myself on the opposite side of the argument than I would expect to be with you, again," Draco murmured. "Who do you think has the most time and ability to study the Animagus transformation in the way you specified, Harry?"

Harry frowned at him.

Draco spread his hands, indicating the lab and the Manor. "Pure-bloods. I have a job because I wanted to prove to society that I was different now, and I lost a lot of money. But I still have sufficient money to experiment with potions and buy ingredients and invent new potions because I want to. I could study the Animagus transformation a lot more easily than someone with many children or working constantly could."

Harry frowned harder and rolled over. "I just think of the way that it could be used wrong because I think of the way that everything can be used wrong," he muttered. "You have to, when you're an Auror."

Draco waited until Harry grew impatient with the silence and rolled back to look at him. He was now hanging over the chair with his arms almost dangling to the floor, and Draco had to smile again. He thought he knew why the couch in Harry's home looked well-used, the chairs less so.

He stood up and came to kneel beside Harry, rubbing his fingers through his hair. Other than wincing a little when Draco's hand got near the lightning bolt scar, Harry let him do it, and didn't flinch, and didn't take his eyes from Draco, either.

"You're pessimistic," Draco whispered. "That's understandable, for the reason you just gave me and other ones. But I want to teach you something about the joy of life again." He held out his hand. "What would you like to go and do?"

"I wanted to come and be with you," Harry said, accepting Draco's hand and letting himself be hauled to his feet. "I told you that. And even having arguments with you is better than sitting at home by myself."

Draco considered him, then said, "How long has it been since you flew?"

Harry blinked, stared, then said, "I have no idea. Unless you count the times I've had to snatch up a broom to get after a fleeing criminal."

"I don't," Draco said shortly, and walked towards the far door from the lab, the one that led out into a corridor that faced the gardens. "Come on. I think you need some _fun _in your life, and since no one else will provide it for you, it's up to me."

"Ron and Hermione would go flying with me if I said I wanted to!" Harry followed him, a frown set on his features that rendered them a little less attractive than they could be. Draco decided it was his job to make sure the frown didn't stay there permanently. "Okay, Ron would. Hermione's never liked the fact that she can't learn everything about flying a broom from books."

Draco rolled his eyes over that. "She would." He turned around to face Harry. "And you should stop thinking that I'm out to harm your friends or your former lovers. If I was, I would tell you."

Harry sucked on his lip once, his gaze so steady that Draco wondered if this discussion mattered to him on some other level. Why, though? Draco was being as literal as he knew how, and it wasn't like an argument about a potion that could obviate the Animagus training process was a common topic between them in school.

"What did you do to Frank?" Harry asked softly.

Draco froze. Harry nodded. "That's what I thought," he said. "I saw your wand move, you know. It can't be anything too terrible, since he was fine when he left. But you didn't tell me about it."

"I thought you would insist on taking the spell off if you knew," Draco said. "Oh, _fine_. I put the Voiceless Voice Charm on him."

"The one that makes it sound like your conscience is talking to you all the time?"

Draco nodded. "In this case, it'll make him question his motives for some of the things he was doing and saying. It'll wear off in a month. That was the longest I could make it last, with my level of magical strength."

Harry considered him for so long that Draco felt as though ants had got beneath his skin. Then Harry abruptly grinned, and stepped around him. "So I assume you have your own Quidditch pitch, if you talked about flying," he said. "Does that include your own brooms? And are they good ones? I haven't been on a Firebolt in forever."

"The Firebolt is reserved for the _owner _of the house," Draco said, following him, his heart so light that it felt as if he might float off his feet. "You can have one of the Nimbuses that I keep for guests."

Harry spun around to face him, and Draco had to stop, teetering on his toes, they were that close. Harry reached out and took Draco's jaw in one hand, bringing his face gently nearer while he beamed at him.

"Will you let me have the Firebolt for a kiss?" he asked.

Draco licked his lips. He didn't know where his voice had gone, but his hand rose and touched Harry's face, as shakily as Harry had touched his. There was at least that to be proud of, he thought. He leaned in and opened his mouth, prepared to kiss Harry.

But Harry stepped back, and smiled again, and said, "The look on your face was worth more than a Firebolt. I'll take a Nimbus." And he jogged down the corridor, looking out for the windows that opened into the gardens, and opening the right door.

Draco touched his face. His own lips felt as swollen as though they _had _been kissing for a long time, and he had to swallow again before he could follow.

It was probably a good thing that Harry had held back. Draco didn't want the first real kiss Harry gave him to be a joke, or out of a sense of obligation.

But he would have been willing, he could admit, if only to himself, to take the risk and find out.

* * *

To have a broom beneath him again was the richest thing Harry had ever experienced, better than the food they'd had at the Cloth of Gold last night.

The Malfoy Quidditch pitch was a small space of tended grass between high hedges, with a single Keeper's hoop off to the left side, in front of a bank of flowers so blue that they were hard to look at. Harry thought the pitch's grass was a darker green than usual, too, as though some Malfoy ancestor had been trying to make a sculpture of emerald and sapphire here.

But what mattered more than the looks of the place was how happy it made him, and the conjured breezes, rocking from one side of the place to the other, that made him twist as he flew.

Draco was behind him on the Firebolt, and Harry had reason to know that was a good broom, but he couldn't keep up with Harry. The minute Harry's feet had left the ground this time, it was like being eleven years old all over again. He knew what to do. He knew how to fly. And no older broom or unfamiliar pitch or magic wind was going to prevent him from flying rings around Draco.

_And no past pain, either. _

Harry zoomed down towards the ground, up to the sky again, around the Keeper's hoop, and back to the center of the pitch, while Draco was still going up in a single, controlled hop. Draco gaped at him. Harry hung upside-down simply to stick his tongue out at Draco, and then up he went again, so long a sweep that his lungs pounded inside his chest and he opened his mouth and whooped. That made him lose his breath, but who cared when he could swing around again, pointing at the earth, and chase it back down?

"_Harry!_ You can't do that on a Nimbus!"

Harry turned right-side up, smiled at Draco, corrected him gently, "No, _you _can't do that on a Nimbus," and went back to chasing the wind.

Draco began to follow him, but it was a long time before he got close. Harry wasn't racing him on purpose, though. It was just so _exhilarating _to kick into the wind and feel it kick back, not because it was Dark or hated him or was concerned about him but because it was there, and that was its nature.

_I need to fly more often. _Harry couldn't even remember the last time he had seen his own broom. It had grown less and less important, next to his job and his time spent with his friends, and, when he was angry or stressed, running or going to the Muggle clubs.

But the Muggle clubs were no longer an option, as long as he had Draco. Flying seemed like a wonderful substitute, at least for the moment.

Harry got the broom going parallel to the ground, crouched on it, and then hurled himself into the air. He came down sideways, the opposite to the way he'd been sitting before, did a complicated scramble with his hands, and was seated backwards before Draco could finish his scolding yell. Harry laughed and lay down on the broom, then rotated around it again and was seated upright and forwards again at the end of a process that he couldn't even remember.

He knew he could fall, contrary to what Draco was currently yelling at him. That was part of it. But he also knew that he had the skills necessary not to fall, and that was the _other _part of it.

If he wasn't good at kissing, if even his relationship with Draco never went anywhere, this was at least one thing he was still good at. He breathed, and the air shot in and out of his lungs like arrows tipped with honey.

It was time to remember that there were things he was good at, he thought.

* * *

Draco had stopped trying to keep up with Harry. He could only do it by risking his life, as good as he was. When they were chasing the Snitch, they were more equal. Draco had a goal to focus on, and Harry didn't do every crazy move that came into his head, because he had to keep his eyes out and search.

But _this_…

Draco shook his head and set his broom to bobbing a few inches off the ground, watching as Harry played tag with his shadow, dodged and climbed and spun, and did what would have been a perfect Wronski Feint if he'd had anyone to deceive. Draco did wince a little when he heard Harry gasping as he pulled out of that last move, but then relaxed when he caught a glimpse of Harry's face. It was obviously a gasp of joy, and Draco couldn't resent that, not when Harry had so little joy in his life most of the time.

_Although I hope to provide more, as he learns to trust me._

Harry finally stretched out on the broom and let one leg dangle off it, the way he'd let his arms dangle off the chair when he was in Draco's lab. He turned his head towards Draco, and his face was open and soft, his smile sleepy and content.

Draco cast his voice so that Harry could hear him, but it wouldn't sound like he was yelling. The acoustic charms on the pitch helped with that, of course. "Are you ready to go and have something to eat?"

Harry nodded. "Could your house-elves cook for us again? I really enjoyed it, the last time they did that." He sat up and kicked the Nimbus back towards Draco. Draco couldn't help but reach out and feel the wood as he went past.

Harry laughed at him over his shoulder. "No, I didn't crack it, if that's what you're wondering. That's just what it's capable of with a _competent _rider on the shaft."

Draco couldn't help himself. "I'm sure you're right," he said, with a gracious nod. "And someday, I hope that you can surprise me with your competency on _other _shafts."

Harry's emotions shifted across his face like clouds across the sky. Draco didn't know how to read all of them, but when the changeable pattern ended, Harry was smiling politely enough, his eyes still open.

"Maybe someday," he said.

_And he doesn't take offense to everything I say, _Draco thought, as he followed Harry inside and began to call out orders to the house-elves, knowing he would be heard once he was within the walls of the Manor. _That's another step. _

* * *

"Are you ready for another lesson?"

Harry cracked an eye open. They'd had a spectacular dinner, one that filled Harry up with more varieties of bread and cheese and fish than he knew existed, all of them delicious. Since then, they'd been sitting in Draco's drawing room, Draco reading and Harry pretending to read. He couldn't even get focused enough to focus his eyes on the words of the book he'd been reading in Draco's lab, which was pretty interesting. He'd dozed, with the book on his stomach, and Draco in the chair across from him.

Now, of course, Draco was leaning forwards with his book on his knee. Harry turned around and pulled his legs up. "In what?"

"I think," Draco said, "that I'd really like to see the way you look with your shirt off. I never have, you know."

Harry blinked at that, thrown, but he didn't know why. A second later, he identified the feeling of wrongness. "But you did," he said. "I cast that charm the first night that showed you all my scars."

"Scars," Draco said, his voice so low that Harry couldn't have heard him if the fire was a little louder, "aren't all of you."

Harry licked his lips. That was true. And Draco had been saying the same kind of thing for a while now, and Harry had accepted that it was most likely true.

But his hands still shook when he reached down and began to pull his shirt over his head. He wasn't sure that he could do anything about that. It might always happen, whether or not he wanted it to.

He glanced up. Draco was watching him, his lips parted and his eyes wide and pale. He gave Harry a smile when he caught his gaze, but didn't turn away.

Harry nodded, swallowed again, and pulled his shirt off. He kept his eyes on the floor, trying not to think, all the while, of how he was still stained with sweat from the flying, and how his ribs showed, and how pale his skin was, and the scars that curved and danced across his chest, and the way that Jacquelyn had touched the skin above his heart and then looked away in embarrassment, and the way that Ginny had flinched the first time she saw him naked, with the burn-scar from the locket—

He reached for his shirt.

Draco took it away from him. Harry started and looked up. He hadn't even realized that Draco had come across the room and was now kneeling in front of him. His steps had been that silent, that quick.

Draco slid his hand up Harry's arm. "The scars aren't all of you," he said. "I want to look at you. Please?" He held up Harry's shirt. "The next time you reach for it, you can have it back. But I just want to try for a little while. Please?"

Harry nodded and closed his eyes, telling himself that the sweat would have dried by now, and that he wasn't as skinny as he'd been when he was in Hogwarts and under the Dursleys' care. He leaned back on the couch, trying to let Draco look.

Draco reached up and slowly moved Harry's hands away from the center of his chest. He hadn't realized that he'd folded them above the scars there, either.

Harry let his hands drop on either side of his head and shut his eyes so firmly that little sparks of color danced across the darkness behind them. He was breathing like the Hogwarts Express. It was probably unattractive.

A second later, he wanted to laugh hysterically. _Probably? _Of _course _it was unattractive. But he already knew that. It was the truth he had already tried to show Draco.

And predictably, it hadn't scared him away. Draco was the one who had asked for this, Harry reminded himself. Harry hadn't forced him into it, into contact with skin or sights that would traumatize him.

But Harry couldn't keep facing the same direction while Draco was looking at him, even if he wasn't looking back. He turned and buried his face in the pillow, shutting his eyes. He dug his fingers into the pillow, too, so that they couldn't come back down and shield any of his chest from view.

He only hoped that Draco would understand.

* * *

Draco took Harry's arm and squeezed it, once. That just made him burrow deeper into the pillow, though, so Draco whispered a few words of reassurance and went back to looking. Harry didn't need to meet his eyes right now. There was no reason.

Yes, he had scars. It was impossible not to acknowledge them, the sweeping claw-cuts and the round burn and the parallel lines that looked as if they went straight _into _his ribs. Draco touched them, and Harry flinched and bounced beneath him. His chest flushed, the color sweeping so smoothly and fast down his skin that Draco had to smile.

But scars weren't all he was.

He was also skinnier than Draco had imagined he would be. Part of that was almost certainly all the running and fighting he did as an Auror, but Draco couldn't help thinking some of it was more than that. That no one would need to _be _this lean, that no one got this lean without special practice. He traced one finger along Harry's ribs. Harry flinched and breathed, and Draco let his hand rest where it had gone for long seconds before he moved it again.

There was the fact that Harry was a little more self-confident than he seemed. He hadn't covered the scars with glamours as long as they were under clothing. It was only the scars on his hands and other visible places that he wanted to keep hidden. Not exactly _encouraging, _but Draco could read some hope into it.

And Harry was alive. The little dark hairs on his chest stirred towards Draco's palm every time he moved his hand. They yearned for his skin. Draco smiled and pressed his hand down flat, and Harry jolted again, one of his own hands flying up.

"It's okay," Draco said, and Harry wavered, hesitated, and let his hand fall back on the pillow again.

Harry _shone, _laid out against Draco's dark green couch the way he was. He was handsome, and endlessly intriguing, and Draco shuddered a little to imagine his chest pressed to that chest, his hands exploring those shoulders, his lips kissing that collarbone.

Not right now. It was too soon. But he sat back on his heels and said, "Thank you," draping Harry's shirt over his chest to let him know that he really was done.

Harry sat up, seized the shirt, and dressed in silence. He kept his eyes averted from Draco's. Draco waited until he looked back of his own accord, and said softly, "You are handsome, you know."

Harry flinched and balled the bottom of his shirt up in his fists as though he was going to roll it up and over his head again. "Stop lying."

Draco sneered at him and got to his feet, crowding in on the couch beside Harry and forcing him to move his feet. "Why would I need to lie? I meant it."

"I'm not sculptured," Harry said, staring at his feet.

"_Sculptured_?" Draco couldn't keep the contempt from his voice, not when it sounded like something Frank would say. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, I don't have muscles." Harry was frowning at his feet now, as if they were the source of everything he hated about his body—rather than Frank being the source of most of it, as Draco thought now. "I don't have a tan. And I have scars."

"Not everyone agrees on you having to have muscles and a tan and no scars to be attractive," Draco said. "Not everyone agrees that the same thing is attractive."

"But wouldn't you find someone who looked like that more interesting than me?" Harry leaned towards him.

"No." Draco caught his hand. "Not unless that person also wanted to protect me and argue with me and was happy just to spend time with me, and who could fly like he has Veela blood."

Harry sighed. "I should have phrased it differently. I mean, isn't that the kind of person that you would rather have sex with? Even if you don't mind looking at my chest because I'm lying on the couch, you might feel differently if you had to see it in bed."

Draco rolled his eyes. "It really isn't as separate for me as you want to make it. I'm attracted to the person who does all those things I told you about, _and _I think you're attractive. Not perfect, no. Maybe I would flinch if I was out in one of those Muggle clubs you told me about and the only thing I knew about you was that you were dancing bare-chested and had those scars. But I can't chop someone into their scars and their skills in bed and their desire to be with me. It doesn't work like that."

Harry swallowed. "I thought it did. That's why I thought that a relationship with you would be perfect. Because, that way, you could be as casual as you wanted, and casual the way I liked."

"You would really have gone on giving me blowjobs and asking nothing in return?" Draco felt a little sick at the thought. It made sense for Harry to ask for just that from Muggles, with his combination of complexes and not knowing the Muggles and not being able to tell them the truth about him being a wizard. But it was disheartening, in a way, that Harry would accept so little for himself from someone like Draco.

"I thought it was the ideal solution." Harry looked at him, tilting his head further when Draco just stared. "I could be with someone who knew I could do magic, someone I had a kind of history with, even. There wouldn't be any nasty surprises on that end. And I would get the pleasure of spending time with you, and conversation. That mattered more to me than the blowjobs or having you never return them."

Draco, despite himself, began to smile. "We want the exact same thing, really," he said. "We've just been approaching it from different ends."

Harry sat up, raising his eyebrows. "I'm afraid you'll have to explain that, since I don't understand," he said.

Draco rolled his eyes, but kept from snapping out some of the words that came to mind. "We both want a partner who cares for us," he said. "We both want someone who matters to us in more ways than just sex. And there you are, and there I am, but our methods for getting that are different. You would be willing to always consider your partner's pleasure and never your own, if you had your way. I wouldn't be willing to do that, because my partner's pleasure is part of mine. But both of us actually put sex for ourselves and without having to do anything at the bottom of the list."

Harry sat tense for so long that Draco wasn't sure Harry would listen to him. Then, reluctantly, Harry also began to grin. "Fine," he said, raking a hand through his hair. "And you're still willing to keep trying? Even as fucked-up as I am?"

"I don't think you're fucked-up," Draco told him quietly. "All right, not as deeply as your partners made you feel it." Because Harry's eyebrows had gone up, and Draco had to admit that he could think of _some _things about Harry that fit that definition. "You came here today, and had fun. You're capable of asking for some things you want, as long as you know that the person isn't going to turn around and snap at you just for having desires. You said that you wanted to go on dates and talk to me even when you thought our relationship would be completely casual and one-sided. All of those are good signs."

Harry smiled, slowly, cautiously, but he did. Draco reached out and picked up his hand, playing casually with his fingers. Harry swallowed and leaned towards him.

"Can I ask you something?" he whispered, his mouth only a few inches from Draco's.

"You are," Draco said dryly. "And you can speak up. It's not like there's anyone else here right now."

Harry flushed, but didn't raise his voice. "Can I stay here tonight?"

Draco exhaled slowly. "In the same bedroom, or a different one?"

Harry jerked a little, as though Draco granting his request was so far out of the realm of consideration that he hadn't anticipated that particular question. He pulled back, studying Draco with one wary eye.

Draco nodded in response to his stare. "I meant it," he said. "Which do you want?"

* * *

Harry shivered. He felt as though someone had just dumped him out in the middle of a winter wind, and he didn't know where to go for shelter.

But at the same time, as he had remembered when he flew earlier that day, the wind could be exhilarating.

He licked his lips and answered. "I—I want to be in the same bed with you."

Draco's smile was grave and quick and deep, but it lit up every corner of his eyes. "Just to sleep," he said. "Not to do anything else."

He made it a statement and not a question, which meant Harry could nod authoritatively. "Yes. That's what I want, I mean," he added, when Draco considered him thoughtfully. "Not to do anything else for tonight, just to sleep. Unless you don't want to." The last words spilled out although he didn't intend them to. His muscles were tightening as he began to reflect that Draco might not want to, that he might feel constrained to offer now that Harry had expressed some interest in it—

But Draco drew him near and wrapped his arms around Harry. Being pressed against him was as warm as though they were both naked from the waist up, and Harry shivered and, finally, began to relax.

"I would be honored," Draco whispered, and kissed his earlobe, the one with the new acid scar on it, without flinching at all.


	11. Insight

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—Insight_

Draco led Harry into the bedroom with a hand on his back, as though he wanted to feel all the tremors of admiration that he expected to spread through Harry.

And Harry had to admit, he looked around with an open mouth. The bedroom was gigantic, with doors opening off in various directions that might lead to entire complete wings for all Harry knew. The stone on the walls of the room was shining and pale, but only where it showed between tapestries of pale blue and pale green. The effect kept the chamber from being too dark, as did the enchanted windows that stood between every two or three tapestries. And they showed the gardens, and sunlit views that Harry suspected were false, and lazy starry evenings over lakes. Harry smiled. It was certainly better than the quality of enchanted windows that they usually got in the Ministry—those people who were lucky enough to have them at all.

The doors were paneled, polished wood, darker than the rest, but not looking out of place with the rest of the room so full of light. There had to be some shadows somewhere, Harry supposed. One stood ajar, and Harry caught a glimpse of a bathroom, all soft bright tile and what seemed to be the world's largest pile of towels. The chairs and the fireplace and the couches all looked to be high quality, too, although Harry couldn't name the wood or the stone or the cloth that they were made of.

And then there was the bed.

It was large and round and covered with pillows. Harry cocked his head at Draco. The lacy white pillows on top weren't the sort of thing he would have expected of Draco.

Draco laughed and waved his hand. The lacy white pillows lifted up and revealed another layer below them, of green and blue pillows as soft as cushions.

"The white was my mother's idea," Draco said. "She liked the sight of me lying on them when I was a baby. I keep them in memory of her, but only when I'm not actually using the bed." He turned to Harry and put his hands on his shoulders.

"I want you to enjoy this," he whispered. "Tell me what I need to do to make you comfortable."

"Stand back a bit," Harry whispered in return. His heart was pounding crazily, and he knew that he wouldn't have any strength left if he waited.

Draco did so, his hands flying away from Harry. Harry winced a little. From the expression on Draco's face, he probably believed that Harry couldn't stand being touched right now.

But Harry raced past him and bounced in the middle of the bed. It was so springy that he almost flew off the other side. He laughed and stood up, then fell to his knees, pillows cascading around him. A mouthful of lace made him spit, and when he could see again, Draco was standing in the middle of the room, his hand over his mouth and his eyes merry.

"Do you do that with every bed you encounter?" Draco finally demanded, dropping his hand from his mouth and coming up to Harry, staring down. His eyes were still bright, and he reached out and flipped a strand of hair away from the side of Harry's forehead with a careless hand.

Harry turned his head and kissed Draco's palm before he could pull his hand back all the way, then looked up at him. "No," he said. "I always wanted to jump on my cousin's bed, but they never let me into his room. And by the time I got one of my own in their house, it was too broken for me to do much with it."

Draco hesitated as if he would ask a question, but luckily, he didn't want to disrupt the playful mood that they were weaving, the same way Harry didn't. He lay down on the bed instead, arching his back and digging his spine into the cushions. "But you could have bounced on the bed at Hogwarts."

Harry smiled at him and sprawled beside Draco, tracing one hand over the ring of pillows and further down, trying to find the covers. He couldn't. Then again, maybe he didn't need to. He could certainly sleep on cushions; he'd slept on plenty of more uncomfortable things during some of his cases. "I did a few times. But I learned that it woke people up, and then I had a lot of homework to do and mysteries to investigate."

Draco smiled and leaned forwards to stroke that piece of hair away from his forehead again. "Well, I'll be happy to provide you with beds to bounce on. Any time. The Manor is full of wings that aren't used much anymore."

Harry snickered. "I hate to think of the cloud of dust that would surround me if I did that."

Draco rolled his eyes. "_Please. _Keeping up empty bedrooms is what house-elves are for."

Harry laughed aloud at that and rolled over in the middle of the bed, kicking his legs out and sighing as his heels settled and dug into the cushions. "Don't let Hermione hear you say that. You'll get an immediate pamphlet about how house-elves are free and independent creatures with purposes of their own."

"A pamphlet rather than a lecture? Granger's improved!" Draco's smile was soft as he turned towards Harry. "But she's wrong, you know."

Harry didn't want to discuss philosophy right now, but he let himself say the words that hovered on the tip of his tongue. "Maybe about most house-elves. But Dobby was happy to be free."

Draco scowled a little. "There's a strong chance that elf was insane, you know. Even long before he started wanting freedom, some of the ways he behaved were…erratic. My mother wouldn't let him take care of me when I was little."

Harry winced away. "Don't, okay?" he whispered. "Dobby was a friend. He died helping me escape your—your cellar."

Draco paused for long enough that Harry didn't know whether he was going to honor the request or not. Then he reached out and stroked Harry's hair. "All right," he murmured. "I won't make you upset. I don't _want _to."

Harry smiled at him and leaned forwards to kiss his chin. That was less threatening than his mouth. Neither Frank nor anyone else had ever told Harry that he was horrible at chin-kissing. "Thank you," he said. "Now. What do you usually do at night? Take a shower? Read for a while?"

Draco considered him with half-closed eyes. He looked comfortable here the way he hadn't downstairs, Harry thought. He wondered if Draco thought those rooms were too formal, or whether he had got to play in this room when he was a child and just associated it with having fun, or something else. He wanted to know all about Draco, the way it had once been desperately important to know about Ginny's favorite ice cream and the times that she had stolen her brothers' brooms and gone riding.

Harry swallowed when he thought of that. _I just hope this works out better than it did when I was with Ginny._

As if Draco could sense that Harry was slipping away again, he spoke quickly. "Who takes a shower in the evening? It must be people whose hair doesn't get messed up by sleeping as much as mine. I sleep _hard, _Potter, I'll have you know."

Harry smiled. "All right. But you at least brush your teeth, I suppose?"

"At Hogwarts," Draco said. "At home, I always preferred the Cleaning Charms that I performed. Or my parents, when I was still too young."

Harry had to make a face. "I don't want to think about how Cleaning Charms would feel on my _teeth. _They sting my skin enough as it is."

"That's because you don't know the proper way to cast them," Draco said. "You do need a mirror to do it." He reached out and touched Harry's cheek, petting up and down as though he was feeling the shape of his teeth through the skin. "Do you trust me to cast it on you?"

"If we go in the bathroom and you're in front of a mirror," Harry said. "As you were so kindly explaining that we need to do."

Draco smiled, and led the way.

* * *

_This is ridiculous._

It was ridiculous for Draco to be so nervous, at any rate, as Harry turned around, admiring the wall-length mirror and the shower that overlapped the northern side of the bathroom as he'd admired Draco's bedchamber. Harry had asked for this, and he wouldn't blame Draco if it stung a bit. Draco was afraid it might. He had had this performed on him by other people, and done it for himself since he got his wand. But he had never done it for someone else. There was a reason he hadn't seriously considered a career as a Healer.

"This bathroom is _huge_," Harry said.

Draco managed to laugh despite the fear that prickled and tugged at his nerves. _Hopefully the way that I might sting Harry is no worse than that. _"That's the only thing you can think of to say?"

Harry cocked his head back to grin at him. "I already paid your bed the compliment of jumping on it. I'm afraid that I can't think of a similar compliment to pay your shower. Except by using it, but I don't think you want me to do that right now," he added, looking doubtfully at the shower, as though he thought the door would open and sweep him into it.

"You can use it later," Draco said, and drew him away to face the mirror. Harry stood there beneath his hands, passive in a way that made Draco frown. He drew his fingers up the sides of Harry's shoulder blades, watching him. Harry stood, breathing easily, but his eyes were shut.

"If you don't trust me not to hurt you, we can wait," Draco said.

Harry sighed and opened his eyes. "It's not—that. Not exactly. It's just going to take a while for me to really trust you."

"How can you stand here if you don't trust me?" Draco's hands flexed open, once, then fell down. "I didn't think you would let anyone you were wary of that close."

Harry snorted a little. "I'm doing this for you, Draco," he said. "Because I know that you'd like me to be this close and trust you to use a Cleaning Charm on my teeth." He met Draco's eyes in the mirror instead of turning his head back to look at him. "I don't think the charm will hurt that much even if you fuck it up."

"But you don't trust me enough to want it." Draco dropped his hands and stepped away. His head had a dizzy lightness to it, as though it was inflating like a balloon, and he felt sick.

Harry held his gaze. "Sorry."

Draco shook his head, without words. He thought back over what Harry had said about his lovers so far, about Frank in particular. His words would have made Harry sensitive and flinching about hurting others, but why would they have made him think other people would hurt him? So far, Draco had thought Harry was fearless about that, the way he had plunged into giving Draco a blowjob without having an idea if Draco had really changed since their Hogwarts days.

"Fine," Draco said. "Brush your teeth the way you need to. Wash your face. Do whatever you need to do. But then—I'd really like to talk, and find out why you distrust other people so much."

Harry's chest trembled as he took in a breath, and so did his eyelashes. But his voice was gentle. "Okay."

Draco turned and walked out of the bathroom, to flop down on the bed. His hands were shaking, but he clenched them into his lap and snorted. He didn't even know who he was angrier at, Harry or the people who had taught him to react this way.

And if he got too angry with either one, then he stood the chance of frightening Harry away again.

Draco hissed and created a mini-bulwark of pillows to lean against. If he could, he would hold onto the image of Harry jumping on the bed and laughing. That was the Harry he wanted to be with, the one that he thought Harry would turn into if Draco gave him enough time and space and patience.

But Merlin, the only art he had ever practiced with patience was potions. He wasn't sure he could do it with dating.

* * *

Harry took his time with conjuring a brush and toothpaste, cleaning his teeth, cleaning his face, and pissing. He didn't want to go out there, but even more, he didn't want to have to excuse himself to do one of them while Draco was holding onto him. Once he got out there, he would give Draco his full and undivided attention.

_Why do you distrust other people so much?_

Harry sighed and touched the scar on the back of his hand. He knew the answer, and he could explain it to Draco. But he couldn't stop the automatic reactions, like thinking that Draco would hurt him with a Cleaning Charm that stung someone's gums. He didn't know what to do about it, except keep trying.

But Draco had just shown that trying wasn't enough for him, that he wanted Harry to trust him right away and with _everything._

Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. He would do what he could. That would either be enough, or it wouldn't.

And he could survive the loss of Draco. It would hurt, he would bleed, but he could go on. That wasn't what he had felt like when he had first lost Frank, or even Veronica. That had to be a sign he was healing, if he was no longer so dependent on someone else's good opinion.

He opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

Draco sat in the center of the bed, pillows tucked behind him and in front of him. He peered over the ones in his lap at Harry, his hands clenched so hard that Harry could see his knuckles standing out under the skin from this distance.

Harry sighed and walked over to him. Draco tilted his head back, and said nothing even when Harry stood right beside the bed.

"Can I sit down?" Harry asked quietly.

Draco still said nothing either way, but after a second, he nodded.

Harry took a chance and sat beside Draco, leaning his head on Draco's shoulder. Draco hesitantly put an arm around his waist. Harry nodded. That was okay. He trusted Draco to hold him now.

"Why do you trust me to do this but not to sting your teeth?" Draco whispered into his ear.

Harry took a deep breath, with his eyes on the covers. "I would have let you do it," he said. "You know that."

"Forgive me for saying that knowing that someone would _let _me hurt them doesn't make me hot," Draco snapped back.

Harry relaxed a little. Draco didn't sound any angrier than he had during some of their other arguments. "Fine," he said. "I told you that Frank told me that I'd been hurting people for a long time and hadn't realized it."

Draco's chin banged him on the top of the head as he nodded, and Harry winced. Draco muttered what didn't sound like an apology and said, "But you also know that Frank is a lying arsehole and you shouldn't trust him."

"Veronica told me the same thing," Harry reminded him quietly. "I don't think they knew each other, and I don't think they could have come up with the exact same lie. And some of the reactions from the people before Frank only make sense when I think about them that way."

Draco moved restlessly. "What does that have to do with you not trusting me? I thought you were happy to accept pain from other people, just not the other way around."

Harry grimaced. Now that he had to say the words, his jaw wanted to lock up. But he was still going to say it. "Okay," he said. "I can _let _people hurt me. It's just—I don't trust my own perceptions anymore. Not in relationships, unless they're just friendships or the kind of casual sex I had with Muggles. I don't know if I can trust someone. Maybe I was just _thinking _they were trustworthy. Maybe I'm wrong. I was wrong about so many other things. I'm just not very perceptive, at all, and I don't have good character insight. I can accept pain from other people, I can take chances and decide that it's worth the pain to try and get close to them, but I can't—I don't know if I'm right about them. Ever. At all."

There was a short silence. Then Draco said, "So if you thought I was kind to you, protective, then you would immediately start doubting yourself? Because you could be wrong, since you were wrong once before?"

Harry nodded in silence, against his shoulder.

"Harry." Draco moved back, and Harry had to raise his head and look at him. Draco reached out to him, not taking his shoulders the way he had in the bathroom but his hands. Harry blinked at him.

"I want to make this promise," Draco said, and his eyes were direct and ablaze. Harry didn't think there was anything wrong with _that _perception, at least. Frank had never said there was anything wrong with his eyes, except that they attracted people to Harry and then he couldn't make it good for them. "I will _always _be honest with you. If I think that you're going too far, hurting me, I'll let you know. If I do something you disagree with but I'm doing it to protect you, I'll let you know. And if I want to break up with you, I would definitely tell you. Okay?"

Harry slowly stretched his fingers. It felt like they'd been cramped for a long time, although he knew that was really just the result of clenching them hard for the last few minutes. He nodded.

"Does that mean you believe me?" Draco's voice had gone soft.

"Yes." Harry said it with all the conviction he could muster. He still thought that Draco's trust in him was probably misplaced and Harry would end up hurting him, but Draco had better insight than he did, better perceptions. If he said he would be honest, he would be. Harry could try his best, but he would never be as certain.

"Good." Draco kissed him hard enough to hurt and leaned back. "So. Do you want to try sleeping next to each other now?"

Harry smiled at him. "Thank you for phrasing it that way instead of as sleeping _with _each other," he said.

* * *

Draco kept his sigh to himself. That was a tiny thing, a thing that no one else he knew would have thanked him for, because it was so little they wouldn't have noticed. But then, no one else would have needed the reassurance, either.

"You're welcome," he said, and rolled over on his side. "How do you want to do this?"

Harry looked around the bed as though searching for a place he could lie, and then began to tug and rearrange some of the pillows. Draco helped him, suggesting a slightly firmer cushion when Harry began to put his head down on a lacy blue one. It was a little scrap of nothing, and Draco kept it for decoration, not for sleeping on.

Harry looked at him as though he was insane, although he let the lacy pillow go and started pulling some of the larger blue ones into a pile. "Why do you keep it, then?"

Draco shook his head and didn't say anything. It wasn't the right time to try and explain the purpose of decorative pillows to Harry. They were going to have a hard enough time getting comfortable, if Harry didn't find something he liked soon.

But at last Harry curled up on his right side, with Draco behind him, arm slung over Harry's chest, and pillows scattered around them like casualties of war. Harry sighed and closed his eyes. Draco felt the heartbeat beneath him, the ribs, the skin that was probably scarred, if the way that Harry tensed when he shifted was anything to go by.

"Honestly, do you need a Muscle Relaxant Draught?" Draco murmured. "It seems like it's the only way that you'll ever go to sleep."

Harry stirred restlessly against him. "Sorry," he said, and it came out as a snap. He took a deep breath and stretched his arms out against the bed. "It's been a long time since I slept _beside _someone, let alone with them."

Draco nodded and cast a few charms that softened the bed behind them, around them, and under them, so that Harry sank a few inches. He squeaked and tried to sit up. Draco shook his head, casting more charms that raised the portion of the bed _he _was on higher. "It's okay. I just thought you might be more comfortable if I wasn't touching you as much."

"I'm not more comfortable with you above me like that." Harry hunched his shoulders. "It makes me feel like something's going to attack me."

"Tell me," Draco said, because biting his tongue only took him so far, "does that reaction come from your lovers, or your Auror paranoia?"

"Or even from the war," Harry muttered, not sounding offended. For a long few seconds, he lay there, squirming, and Draco held himself back. But he had to wonder if this would work at all, or if Harry would get up and go to another bedroom. Maybe even go home. Draco put an arm over his eyes and tried not to think about what he would do if Harry did that.

"All right," Harry said suddenly. "Let's try this. Can you get all of the bed back to the same level?"

Draco sniffed as he cast the charms. "Of course. What good would be a bed where you couldn't do that?"

Harry rolled over and smiled at him, and Draco reached out to touch his hair. Harry didn't try to evade his hand or say anything about scars, just leaned into it. "The Muggles manage somehow."

`"Another reason to be glad that I'm a wizard," Draco pointed out. "I learn something new every day."

Harry laughed this time, and waited until Draco had lifted and sunk the separate portions of the bed. Then he arranged the pillows so that they surrounded him like a moat, gleaming blue and white and green. "Can you lie on the other side of this and still be comfortable?" he asked.

Draco looked him directly in the eye. "If I do that, then I can't touch you."

Harry's smile was gentle and sad, but his gaze didn't waver. "I know. I think that's the way it has to be, at first."

Draco swallowed down a protest and nodded. It was better than running away, and at least Harry was being honest with him this time.

Harry placed a few more pillows where he wanted them, and then lay down on his side again, the left side this time, facing Draco, and smiled at him. When he closed his eyes, Draco heard him whisper, "Good night."

Draco hesitated, then lifted up the blankets and pulled them over himself. He didn't need as many pillows as Harry did, and he didn't need to sleep surrounded by them, either. He would go to sleep, and do his best to forget about the warm, breathing presence next to him in the bed, the presence he couldn't touch.

But if he forgot, that didn't work either, did it? He had to be conscious, and listen, and want, without touching. Draco hadn't had to delay his desires very often in the last few years, when everything he did was working towards one of them or the other, and he didn't know if he could do this, now.

But although it took long enough to make his eyes feel scratchy with weariness, he did fall asleep at last, and into dreams that weren't unpleasant.

* * *

Harry slowly opened his eyes. The room was dark, and he knew, without casting a _Tempus _Charm, that it was still the middle of the night.

He was cold.

_That would be because you don't have any blankets on you, genius, _he thought a second later, and reached down to feel for them.

He found a rucked-up line of them, but when he tried to tug on them, they seemed to be caught on something. Thinking it was the pillows, Harry pulled on them again, and rolled back towards his side of the bed.

_His _side of the bed. And the obstruction the blankets were "caught" on was muttering sleepily to itself.

He was in bed with Draco.

Harry stared at the invisible ceiling, wondering how he could have forgotten that fact. Then he rolled over and stared towards the flash of pale hair behind the pillows. Draco was mostly covered up by the blanket, but he was there, and Harry hadn't felt as though someone was looming over him or preventing him from sleeping, or about to attack him. He was just _there, _and Harry had trusted him enough to sleep beside him.

Harry listened to Draco's soft breaths, and swallowed. He hadn't hurt Draco, either, the way that Frank had insisted he probably would if he slept beside someone ever again. Just having Harry in the same bed when Harry had hurt him brought up painful memories, Frank implied.

But this…

He'd _done _it, and it was okay. He could listen to Draco's steady breathing and know that. Draco would probably have been glad to get closer to him if Harry could have allowed it.

And Harry thought he could, now. Although the blankets were draped around his shoulders and down his back, he was still cold.

He waited until he was sure that Draco hadn't awakened, then started pulling the pillows out of the way.

Draco grunted and stirred, once, which made Harry pause with his heart hammering. But he must have gone back to sleep, because the soft breathing started again, and Harry slid into contact with Draco's side. Blazing heat enveloped him, far better than the blanket.

He was still taking a risk. It was hard to lie there and not think of all the things that _could _go wrong, and how he might have misjudged things, and entrapped Draco, and made him believe things that weren't true.

But he also remembered Draco saying that he would be as honest with Harry as he could, and Draco hadn't wanted the pillows in the way, had wanted to sleep beside him. If Harry couldn't trust himself, maybe he could trust someone else's evaluation of himself.

Harry closed his eyes. He banished the memories of Frank and Veronica and all the rest of them from his mind. This was Draco. No one else breathed like this, was warm like this, smelled like this—not in the exact same way. Harry could lie still and silent with Draco, and it wasn't going to hurt him.

Put like that, it was surprisingly easy for Harry to fall asleep.

Too bad that he had forgotten about the nightmares.

* * *

Draco came awake, shuddering and dragging his hand over his eyes. It felt as though some horrible monster was right behind his eyelids, scratching its claws, not at all delicately, over his brain and trying to get out.

The feeling went on, and a moment later Draco realized it was because the screaming was going on.

He rolled over, groping desperately beside him. Harry was somewhere there, beyond the barrier of pillows, and if Draco could reach him when he didn't have his eyes all the way open yet—

The screaming body rolled into him, and hands grabbed desperately at him. Draco murmured something hoarse, got his breath and his voice back, and asked, "Harry? What the hell is going on?"

Harry's body jolted as though Draco had struck it with lightning, and then Harry slumped and opened his own eyes. Draco could make out how dark they were, but Harry didn't try to pull away. He smiled wryly at Draco and murmured, "So _that _was a harsh introduction to some of the other problems with sleeping with me."

"What _happened_?" Draco demanded, looking around. He didn't see any house-elves popped up unexpectedly beside the bed, and a wave of his wand told him about no problems in the wards. Not that he would have expected much disturbance in the wards, anyway, he thought, turning back to Harry. They were wrapped so thickly around each other that someone trying to disturb one of them would inevitably wake five others up.

"A nightmare." Harry swallowed, then grimaced and started to sit up. "I need some water."

"Let me," Draco said.

For a moment, their eyes held. Then Harry lay back against the pillow that had ended up behind his shoulders and waved his hand. "Be my guest," he murmured, closing his eyes.

"I won't, but I'll be your host," Draco murmured as he stood, and saw Harry smile at him. Draco smiled back and moved across the room to the bathroom, conscious of the heavy weight of Harry's eyes on his back.

And the way that Harry's arms had flailed at him as Harry struck and screamed. He hadn't anticipated nightmares in Harry's catalogue of injuries and pains, but he should have. It made sense that the combination of the war, the Auror job, and the other things that had happened in his past would give him nightmares.

Draco wondered if he dared press to ask what it was about.

Harry gulped down half the cup of water that Draco brought back, and dropped to his back again, sighing. "Thanks," he muttered, touching his forehead as though he thought his lightning bolt scar might split open. "It didn't happen this time, but sometimes my throat is so dry that I think I'm going to die of dehydration before I can make it to the bathroom."

Draco blinked and asked the first question that occurred to him, though he had to admit that it might not be the first one that occurred to someone else. "Then why not just keep a glass of water beside your bed?"

Harry smiled grimly. "Because it gets knocked over when I start flailing around, and waking up with my sheets soaking wet and cold because I got upset is something I only want to experience once."

Draco nodded and sat back on his heels, letting his hands rest on his knees. Harry kept his eyes on Draco's face as though he anticipated more questions. Maybe he should, Draco thought, staring at him. Harry might refuse to tell him the truth, but Draco would never know that until he asked.

"What was your nightmare about?"

Harry grimaced and ran his thumb over his palm for a second. Then he said, "It's not—I think I could trust you with it. But it's so _small. _I don't know that I can really explain it to someone who didn't live through it."

Draco nodded, unsurprised. "Then would a Pensieve help? You could put the memory of the nightmare in there and I could experience it the way you did. Or you could let me read your mind with Legilimency and see if that helped."

Harry gaped at him. Draco didn't roll his eyes, but mostly because he was starting to get some practice in resisting the gesture. "What part of your absurd complexes makes you want to resist my invitation _now_?" he asked.

* * *

_Someone would _offer _to do something like that? _

Draco would want to listen to his nightmares. Harry had tried to anticipate that, to accept it, and find the words if he could. But he hadn't anticipated someone else wanting to _see _them. The memories he had put into the Pensieve for Draco when he was trying to scare him off were the only time someone had ever seen his memories, unless you counted the time that Snape had tried to teach him Occlumency.

"That you would care enough to want to see them," Harry said slowly. "No one else offered…I didn't think about it, either," he had to add, because clouds were drawing down on Draco's brow, and he didn't want Draco blaming his past lovers for things that really _weren't _their fault.

Draco sat there for a second, then made a sharp gesture. "I won't say what I think they _should _have done," he said. "But I'm asking you again. A Pensieve, or Legilimency? Or are you going to tell me to sod off and mind my own business?"

"Legilimency," Harry said. "I trust you not to hurt me, and the memory is so confused that I probably wouldn't get the whole thing into a Pensieve. I know that Legilimency can see even buried memories, things you think you forgot."

Draco drew his wand, casting him a passionless glance in the meantime. Harry, who had seen just how passionate it _could _get, didn't flinch or back away. "You know a lot about Legilimency for someone who's not good at it."

Harry smiled slightly as he met Draco's gaze. "I've had it used against me, multiple times. You get to study some of the theory, then, from the front seat."

Draco paused, but in the end, he seemed to have decided that asking Harry about his past encounters with Legilimency was counterproductive. He laid his wand on Harry's forehead and braced his fingers beneath Harry's chin. "Open your mind as much as you can," he instructed in a low voice, making it as boring as he could to listen to without sacrificing Harry's attention altogether. Harry knew that; it was part of the theory he had learned when one of his enemies who didn't want to "torment" him tried to lull him into simply accepting the intrusion. "Then it'll be less painful. Think of me as someone welcome to your mind, someone who can go everywhere and see everything."

Harry tensed once, then consciously relaxed his muscles. "You're not him," he muttered, when Draco paused and gave him another cool glance.

"Who's 'him'?" Draco swished his wand back and forth without letting go his hold on Harry's chin or looking away from his eyes, as though he needed to limber up his wrist. "Not Frank, hopefully."

Harry shook his head. "Frank believed in speaking the truth to me, not invading my mind and planting it there."

He would have continued, but Draco pinched his chin, and Harry glared at him. "I thought you were supposed to be relaxing me, not hurting me and making me think of pain," he snapped.

Draco's eyes glittered like agates. "I don't want to hear anything about Frank right now, speaking the truth or lying. But don't think of this as someone _invading _your mind. That can make you fight me more effectively than any pain. It's sharing, the way you shared your memories with me in the Pensieve. I would still like to know who 'he' was, but it can wait until after I've seen the dream."

Harry nodded, and Draco smiled and crouched in front of him, his wand lifting again. "Good. Try to relax, if you can. _Legilimens_."

Harry managed not to shut his eyes, because that would cut off Draco's ability to read his thoughts. Instead, he tried to let them drift, let _himself _drift, and the walls that would have risen up to choke Draco's way collapsed into banks of dust off to the sides. Harry breathed, gently, in and out.

And Draco didn't hurt him.

He traveled through Harry's mind, a noticeable presence. No matter how much Harry concentrated or thought, he couldn't accept Draco as simply part of him, someone that was the same instead of foreign.

But he didn't have to. And it wasn't even as hard to keep the memories of those bad Occlumency lessons with Snape or the last time that someone had tortured him with Legilimency away as he had feared. Draco walked through, picked up his memories, and put them down again when he found out they weren't the ones he wanted. He didn't tear apart Harry's thoughts just to tear. He didn't cause pain.

Harry took another long, slow breath. In its way, this was a victory as complete as finding out that he could sleep beside Draco in the bed without pillows between them.

_I can still trust people._

* * *

Draco knew when he had found the memory that was the center of the nightmare—whether it was solely the memory _of _the nightmare, or whether it was one had had become the dream, he didn't know yet. It lay in the center of Harry's mind, at least for the moment, and glowed like a black diamond. And the path had led him here, once Draco learned the boundaries of the path and knew enough of Harry's mind to recognize which were random thoughts and which were important ones. It would have been tempting to explore, but even more tempting was the thought of seeing what had frightened Harry tonight, and having permission later, because he refrained today, to see what else Harry was hiding.

Draco had never been much of a fan of delayed gratification, but he could accept that future pleasure was its own reward.

The memory continued to shine and pulse when Draco picked it up. Draco frowned, and studied it more closely. It had a luster to it, a coat that looked like many memories laid down over it. Draco had never encountered something like this when he practiced Legilimency, and for a moment, he was at a loss. How was he to determine which was the core memory?

Then he smiled. The luster meant repetition, he remembered Professor Snape murmuring to him, not importance. Harry had had this dream before; it didn't mean that many memories were mingled into it.

Draco took the black diamond in his hands, raised it close to his face, and peered down the center of it.

The darkness unfolded slowly, to the side, like curtains swishing back on a stage. Draco didn't see much when they had parted, though, at least at first. Then a dim line of light under a door guided his eyes to the sides of the door, and the latch, and he nodded. This was the cupboard he had seen in one of the memories Harry had placed in the Pensieve. It didn't surprise Draco that some of his nightmares would start here.

One moment they were in darkness, then there was light and confusion, and the Muggle child—Harry's cousin—that Draco had seen in another memory was yelling into his face. "No one's _coming _for you! You're such a _freak!_ It's no wonder your parents died and left you! No one is coming to get you ever, ever again!"

The Muggle boy flung Harry on the floor and ran away. The floor was that of a kitchen, but it was surrounded with trees, and more memories and visions intermingled as Harry stood and turned away from his cousin.

Draco blinked and looked around, trying to ride the disorienting shifts in perspective. He hadn't looked at the memory of a dream before, and hadn't realized how closely it would correspond to dream logic.

They were in a forest, but it still had the tiled floor of the kitchen in the center, and a series of stools and chairs that looked like they came from a Muggle house. Harry perched on one and wrapped his hands around his head. Another person came and sat down silently on the chair across from him. They wore a dark cloak, but Draco thought it was a man. When he spoke, it was in a voice that made Potter flinch.

_Familiarity, or viciousness? _The only thing Draco knew for certain was that the man was neither the Dark Lord nor Professor Snape.

"You don't deserve to be rescued," the man whispered. "You don't. Think of all the chances you gave up, all the chances you _took, _when you dashed off to rescue people who don't need rescuing, and the ones that you turned your back on because you couldn't believe they were helping you, and the people the prophecy got killed…"

Harry curled in on himself, smaller and smaller. The hooded figure continued speaking, but the words became a drone, and Draco nodded. He had had dreams like that himself, where it sounded like someone was saying awful things, but the noise was more important than any of the individual words.

Then the cupboard came back once again, and settled around Harry's shoulders and head, squeezing him in. The figure, who was still out there somewhere even though Draco could no longer see him, laughed, and the sensation, the _knowledge, _came, that Harry would never leave the cupboard, that no one would ever come to rescue him, that being a wizard had been the dream and that he would never wake up into another life.

A scream shook the cupboard, probably the same one that had woken Draco up. Draco stepped back and pulled himself swiftly and easily out of Harry's thoughts, following the same path he had taken down.

When he opened his eyes again, Harry was curled on the bed, his hands on his temples. Draco forced himself to be gentle as he reached down and lifted Harry's hands away from his face. "Did I hurt you?" he asked quietly. He had done as well as he could, but it _had _been a long time since he practiced Legilimency.

Harry gasped several times and finally opened his eyes. "Not the way that Professor Snape or _he _hurt me," he whispered. "Just…reliving the dream made me realize how awful it is, and how pathetic."

"Dreams are like that," Draco said, turning over on his side and pulling Harry with him so that Harry's head rested on his chest. He was struggling to keep his voice even, not to stutter or ask more about who _he _was. "If you were awake, you would never believe them, but you're not awake, and that's the whole point."

"Thank you for telling me that, Healer Malfoy," Harry said. The roll of his eyes was audible, although Draco had trouble seeing it from this angle. Harry tried to sit up, though, and Draco slapped a hand over his chest to hold him down.

"What?" Harry added. "You've seen the dream. What else do I need to tell you?"

"I've seen the dream now," Draco corrected gently, curling his arm around Harry's shoulders. The pounding of his own heart was diminished, but he could feel the strong, leaping beat of Harry's against his hand still. "You didn't think I would want to hold you? Talk to you about this? See if there was something I could do?"

"I…" Harry blinked at the ceiling and reached a hand down as if he was going to cover up his heart. Draco caught his hand and squeezed it, instead. He would let it go and let Harry cover his heart if he really had to, but he wanted to see what would happen if he interfered, and sure enough, Harry swallowed loudly, nervously, but didn't try to put his hand back.

"Listen," Draco whispered into his hair. "You can have silence if that's what you need, but I need to know what it is you _do _need."

Harry shut his eyes as though he had to think about that for a little while. Draco caressed his hair and his neck, let his hands wander down onto Harry's chest again, and licked his lips as a thought crossed his mind that hadn't earlier. Why not take off his shirt, the next time he wanted to look at Harry with _his _shirt off? Why not let Harry look his fill?

That might remind him that he wasn't the only scarred one in a world full of perfect people.

"I—would like you to hold me," Harry muttered at last.

Draco rolled Harry up his chest and around, letting the bed and pillows take most of the weight, until Harry was ensconced with his face in Draco's shirt. Harry laughed and lifted his face. "I can't really breathe like that."

Draco smiled. "And the more you complain, the happier I'll be," he said, rearranging Harry again so that his elbow wasn't poking Draco in the stomach.

Harry gaped at him. "But you weren't happy when I complained about you brushing my teeth."

"I want to know what I can do to make you happy," Draco said. "I'm not happy about the _causes _of your complaints, but if you tell me that you're uncomfortable, that means that you've given up on that fantasy of having everything on a perfectly casual footing so that you never bother me."

Harry took a short time to think about that. Draco watched his face, silent and contemplative, and didn't say anything, because he thought he might break the mood and Harry would have a hard time getting it back.

"I'd like to talk about the dream," Harry said. "I could remember it better after you summoned the memory. Does Legilimency usually work like that?"

Draco held his frown back as he nodded. "Yes. Usually, when it's being used by Mind-Healers or other people for whom it's a therapeutic art, the Legilimens brings the memory out and puts it in a Pensieve so that the patient can see and discuss it with the Healer. But just looking at it for long enough, the way I did, lets you see it, too."

Harry nodded back. "It makes sense that I would dream about the Dursleys. I used to make believe that I had parents out there, strong, rich parents who would rescue me, and one time Dudley heard me pretending that. So that part of the dream comes from memories."

Draco stroked Harry's hair back from his forehead again, not knowing what to say. With some of his friends, he would have offered to curse the Muggles, or anyone else who had hurt them. With his parents, he would have done that plus researched ways to make sure that they had strong wards around their rooms and potions to help them sleep. With Harry, he wasn't sure what help he could give.

"You must have been so relieved when you found out that you could leave for the wizarding world," he said, to have words to offer.

Harry looked up and smiled at him. "Oh, I was. When Hagrid told me on my eleventh birthday—he had to do that because Uncle Vernon kept taking all my Hogwarts letters away—I felt the world just _opening _up in front of me. I mean, I wasn't happy when I heard that I was famous and the way my parents had died, but I knew no one could ever stuff me back in my cupboard again."

Draco lay further back as one of the pillows sank under him, and Harry came with him, a faint smile still on his face. Draco stroked the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. Harry didn't stiffen under him. Maybe that was one scar he was used to having people touch.

"Who was the man who spoke to you?" Draco asked quietly. "I didn't recognize his voice."

Harry's smile faded. "As near as I can tell, Sirius. It doesn't make sense for him to talk to me that way, because I know now that he wouldn't blame me for his death, but in a dream? Yeah, it means that I couldn't escape. Maybe I had the wizarding world, but I'd never escape the consequences of my actions."

Draco bowed his head and kissed Harry's forehead before he could stop himself. Harry stirred and looked up at him in surprise.

"What was that for?" he asked. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you. It was nice. It was just unexpected."

"I think maybe that dream is saying something more profound than you realize," Draco said quietly, tightening his hold on Harry. "You keep thinking that you aren't going to escape, don't you? You keep thinking that you can never make up for all the awful things you supposedly did to your lovers and other people. There's no apology, no forgiveness, and once you hurt someone, it's forever. That's another reason you were so anxious not to hurt me."

Harry didn't reject the conclusion immediately, the way Draco had been afraid he might. He thought about it, rolling his tongue against his teeth. It was an annoying sound, but Draco reminded himself about the good side of it, the side that said Harry was comfortable enough with him to make it, instead of anxiously suppressing every natural instinct because he was afraid that he might bother Draco.

"That's true," he said at last. "I suppose Frank convinced me that there was no way out of my mistakes with my lovers, specifically, but all this time…no way to change the Auror Department, no way to have the family or the long-term relationship I wanted, no way to escape my fame." He nodded seriously, his hair flopping into his face. "I think I _am _afraid of that."

Draco sighed. Harry promptly rolled over and fixed his attention on him. Draco tugged his fingers through Harry's fringe again, to put off saying what he had to say.

But Harry was quick enough to catch on to the gesture. He reached up and took Draco's fingers in his own, gently turning them over.

"What is it?" he asked. "Please tell me."

"I think that it's good you recognized what I was saying, without reacting defensively," Draco began. "And that you can start _thinking _about what afflicts you, instead of just reacting to it."

"But?" Harry prompted, a peculiar smile on his face as he watched Draco out of half-lowered eyes.

"I don't think I can help you on my own," Draco admitted. "I'm a Legilimens, but not a trained Mind-Healer. And other dreams might be harder to explain. I want you to consider seeing a trained Mind-Healer."

* * *

Harry closed his eyes. His body shuddered a little as he remembered what had happened the last time he tried that.

"Harry?"

But it wasn't like Draco would know that without Harry telling him. Harry opened his eyes and looked at Draco again. "The last tone tried to sell my secrets to the _Prophet_," Harry said flatly. "The one before that didn't understand why I had any problems, because I was rich and a hero and not crippled for life by a Dark curse, the way that so many of her patients were. The one before that wanted to attribute everything to being raised out of the wizarding world. I didn't even get to tell him about the Dursleys. The minute he heard I'd grown up with Muggles, he was off and running."

Draco nodded slowly, as though Harry's words made sense to him. Harry felt his shoulders relax so quickly it hurt.

"Then you've been unlucky in who you've seen," Draco said. "It doesn't mean the idea itself doesn't have merit, the same way that having a string of bad lovers didn't mean you should give up on the notion of finding a partner forever."

"So if I was wrong about that, I'm wrong about this?" Harry muttered, leaning his head on Draco's knee.

"You could be," Draco said. "I know a Mind-Healer who's developed a spell that would render her completely objective for the duration of speaking to her patient. Able to see more of what plagues them and offer solutions, yes, but it would also keep her from caring about stupid things like your past or your fame. Would you be willing to see her?"

Harry closed his eyes. The last Mind-Healer he'd seen was at Frank's instigation, and that had turned out to be a bloody awful idea. But Draco wasn't Frank. That thought hit him again and again, and each time, the blow was harder, not lesser.

"All right," he agreed, opening his eyes with a nod. "I just don't know how long it will take to…"

"To what?" Draco asked, stroking his hair.

"To get healed," Harry said. "To stop having nightmares." He winced, because he sounded whiny. But this was another part of thinking he'd never escape, he supposed. That the consequences of his actions would never stop, never get better, just because.

Draco rolled him over. Harry found himself lying in Draco's lap, looking at his face upside-down.

"It'll take as long as it takes," Draco said calmly. "And even if something happens and we break up before it's finished, I promise you, we're going to have plenty of good times together."

As he bent down to kiss Harry, Harry felt belief settle in him, heavy and steady.

Strong enough, at last, to outweigh his distrust and his belief in his lovers' faithlessness.


	12. Responsiveness

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—Responsiveness_

Harry shifted on the couch in the waiting room of the Mind-Healer Draco had sent him to—not someone at St. Mungo's, Harry had noted silently when Draco offered the address—and stared again at the walls. There was nothing else to do here, since the chairs were plain and wooden, the room small and without any Quidditch magazines or newspapers, and Harry hadn't brought any books with him.

Either the Mind-Healer or the person she had hired to decorate for her had strange taste in paintings. There was a landscape that showed a flooded city, maybe Venice, with a figure in the foreground that wore tattered scarlet robes and had a grinning skull for a face. There was another with a silver cat sitting bolt upright, while behind it, the starry sky glistened and a moon with a face leered down. And another one had a man that looked suspiciously like Professor Snape, except he was in the middle of a bunch of rainbows conjured from his wand.

As far as Harry could tell, none of them were moving portraits, all Muggle, but the subjects were strange enough to make his heart beat up into his throat a little. When the door into the Mind-Healer's office finally opened, he turned around instinctively.

The woman who stepped through had a strong, square face, calm dark eyes, and dark hair braided behind her head and down her neck with cords of silver. It took Harry longer than it should have to recognize her. When he did, his jaw fell.

"_Bulstrode_?"

The woman paused and considered him. Then she shook her head a little. "Bulstrode was my name before I married," she said. "I go by Robertson now."

Harry clenched his hands on the cushions of the seat, and wondered if he should leave. "Draco didn't warn me."

Bulstrode—shit, Harry couldn't think of her any other way—gave him a remote smile. "He probably feared that you wouldn't have agreed to come if you knew who it was."

Harry shook his head quickly and stood up. "I wouldn't have. I trust Draco, but this is too much. I don't want someone who's going to make fun of me the way you would have at Hogwarts." He walked towards the other door, the one that led back outside into the garden of this anonymous little house in Hogsmeade.

"Mr. Potter."

The novelty of being called that, instead of a sneered insult or _Auror_ Potter, turned Harry around. Bulstrode held up a hand, and a ball of silvery magic formed there, floating like one of Trelawney's crystal globes. Bulstrode nodded to it, and then to Harry. "I know you know what this is. The Aurors were testing them out years ago."

Harry nodded reluctantly. "An oath-sphere." They were magical devices, or creations of pure magic—Harry had never used them enough to really know which—that made sure an oath sworn on them would be kept. But no one would tell Harry exactly how, whether they punished you if you broke them or just made breaking them impossible. Either way, it had sounded like the Imperius Curse to him, and he'd refused to have anything to do with them.

"The Aurors' mistake was in thinking they could use them for many people, such as making many witnesses swear on them to tell the truth," said Bulstrode calmly. "But each can only be used by one wizard, although for multiple oaths." She stretched out her hand and slid it over the surface of the sphere, which clouded over. "I swear on my magic and on this sphere that I will reveal no information about Harry Potter to anyone unless he tells me to."

The oath-sphere vibrated and filled with a silvery mist that seemed to solidify, obscuring it like frost on a window. Then it trembled and fell down into Bulstrode's hand. She held it out to Harry. Harry took it, trying to ignore the way his skin crawled. He had never liked the way these things felt, either.

But the silvery mist looked the way it should, with solid letters in the middle of it that spelled out Bulstrode's oath. Harry swallowed again and looked back at her.

Bulstrode kept reading him with that remote, neutral expression. "I know Draco told you that I developed a spell which will keep me absolutely impartial while we speak," she said. "That's the truth."

"I know," Harry muttered unhappily. He knew that Draco wouldn't send him to someone he thought Harry couldn't trust, and he wouldn't lie about something so important.

On the other hand, Draco might trust her in a way Harry couldn't.

"It doesn't matter who we were at Hogwarts, except insofar as it's relevant to what's wrong with you." Bulstrode still hadn't taken her eyes from him. "I promise that I will cast the spell the minute you step into my office and not release it until you're gone. I can even swear that on the sphere, too, if you like."

Harry shook his head sharply. It was already enough that she had sworn one oath like that. He didn't want her bound by a promise that he trusted—Draco trusted, really—she would keep without that.

"Fine," Bulstrode said, and turned towards the office door. "Are you going to follow me or not?"

Harry shut his eyes. _Draco trusts her. And you want to start trusting the people Draco trusts. He thinks she can help, and you want to be helped. That's the first time it's been true in years. _

Then Harry opened his eyes and snorted, because, really, he had wanted help for years. He had simply given up hope of finding it, the same way he had given up hope of finding a partner and a long-term relationship. But that didn't stop him from wanting.

"All right," he said, and followed her in, handing her back the oath-sphere as he did.

The office was far bigger than most Healers' rooms he'd seen, partially to accommodate a huge ebony desk against the wall opposite the door, but also, Harry thought, to give space to the fireplace with what looked like gold-veined marble set around it and the thick, cushioned chairs that sat in circles every few feet. Bulstrode sat down in the nearest one of these and held her wand towards her chin. Harry nervously took the seat across from her, noting corners and defenses he could use if he had to escape suddenly.

"I am going to cast the spell now," Bulstrode said. "After that, please start telling me about the problem that Draco recommended you to me for."

_You can do this, _Harry told himself again. _You can, no matter how difficult it is. Because no matter how hard you have to fight, Draco is worth it._

Harry nodded. "Okay."

Bulstrode laid her wand against her chin and whispered an incantation that Harry suspected he could have heard if he'd made an effort. But she wanted to keep it secret, and that mattered to her more than hearing it mattered to him. Harry leaned back in his chair instead, feeling the softness of the cloth against the nape of his neck and waiting for Bulstrode to finish.

When she looked at him again, her eyes might have been lenses, her face steel. She nodded. "Tell me what has been happening," she said.

"Okay," Harry said again, and hesitated only once before he began to speak. She wanted the problem that Draco had sent him here for, and technically that was the nightmare, but Harry couldn't see how the whole tangled mess of it wouldn't come out, once he began speaking in detail about the nightmare. However, he didn't think she would judge him for one thing more than another, given the spell.

First he lightly told her about his relationships with his past lovers, and a little about how Draco had been pursuing him and trying to win his trust. Then he told her in more detail about the bed in Malfoy Manor, and the night he'd spent there.

Then came the nightmare.

"I think it was my dead godfather speaking to me," Harry whispered. "Telling me about all the wasted chances, and the horrible things I'd done, even though I never meant to do them. In a way, it's _worse _that I didn't mean to do them. I was thoughtless, and careless, and that's harder to make up for."

"Why would your dead godfather wish to torment you in such a way?"

Harry started and looked at her. Bulstrode still sat there looking absolutely indifferent, though, and Harry supposed the question made sense for someone who hadn't been in his mind and didn't know what Sirius had endured.

"I know that he didn't, really," Harry began. "I know that he would never do it if he was alive. But the voice _sounded _like his, and I can't help thinking that I failed him, that I was part of the reason he died. And that makes me wonder whether—whether some of the other things that happened to me, like the way that I argued with my past lovers and broke up with them in horrible ways, aren't payback for that. A long time coming."

"What would be the logical connection between causing your godfather's death and losing your lovers?"

Harry shrugged. "I never said it was particularly logical," he muttered. He could feel Bulstrode looking at him. There was no pity in her eyes—of course not, since she had cast the spell—but he wanted to bristle in front of her gaze anyway. "But I do wonder. Why is it that I can't keep a lover when I should be perfectly capable of doing it? I didn't pick out six horrible people on purpose, and they didn't have a conspiracy between them to leave me." He drew his hand over his face, and sighed into his palm. This was the part he _really _couldn't confess to Draco, because Draco would mock it, and if there was one thing Harry didn't need to hear, it was more mockery. He had made fun of it himself, inside his own head. Hell, Frank had done the same thing, when Harry shared a little bit of it with him, before Frank left him.

"I did horrible things," Harry said finally, when Bulstrode waited, and watched, and was as still as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. "Isn't—there _has _to be payment for that, right? Somewhere?"

"What horrible things do you think you did, besides the part you claim you played in your godfather's death?" Bulstrode asked calmly.

Harry stared at his hands again. "I killed people," he whispered. "I used the Unforgivables on them. I—I know Draco thinks I didn't rape people, and he wouldn't want me to use that word, but at least I forced sex on them that they didn't enjoy. I deceived Muggles into thinking I was one of them, and I've probably given blowjobs to a few hundred." He looked up at Bulstrode and shrugged. "Take your pick."

Bulstrode waited, as though she didn't know what questions to ask, as if she had become as still and reflective as her glass sphere. Harry leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes. It wasn't working, he thought, this confession to a Mind-Healer. He still felt tight and wound and stretched inside.

Finally Bulstrode said, "The nightmare that you told me about began in a kitchen. You saw your cousin speaking to you. Why your cousin?"

Harry sighed and opened his eyes. He should have known _this _would come out, too. But he didn't think the Dursleys were the only things wrong with him, the only twisting at the strings of his soul. They hadn't made Harry alienate his lovers, and they had been far from his mind when he did most of what he'd done during the war.

"My relatives abused me," he said. He could speak that word now, where once before he would have been unable to, and he thought that was progress, too. "My cousin helped. He beat me up, and made sure that I didn't have friends at school. I made my first friends when I came to Hogwarts. I never had them before."

"You believe that your mind placed him there as a symbol of your alienation?"

Harry grimaced and nodded. "That makes sense. I never—I think that I'm not going to be _normal, _because of what they did to me and what I had to go through in the war. Maybe that's the reason none of my lovers stay," he added. But he had come to that conclusion before, and it hadn't helped, either. He couldn't change his mental scars from the war, any more than he could permanently remove the scars on his body carved in with Dark magic.

"What is normal?"

Harry sat up and scowled at her. "Why do you keep asking questions? I don't think I've heard you make a single statement yet."

"Could I make a statement and remain neutral, as the spell forces me to?"

Harry sighed and slumped back, rubbing a hand over his forehead. "Fine. Fair point," he muttered. And again they sat in silence, except that Bulstrode's gaze seemed more piercing. Probably because it hadn't wavered, Harry thought. He wanted to wince, but he would only get further by speaking, and he wouldn't have got _this _far with any other Mind-Healer.

"I think normal is—what I'm not," he said at last. "Being raised by a loving family. Having a partner and being able to keep them. Having children, if you're partners with someone of the opposite sex. Not having so many scars. Not having fought in a war."

"Could you have been normal, in any way?"

Harry had to think about that, but in the end, he shook his head. "Maybe not. I've been involved in the war since Voldemort cast the Killing Curse at me. Even if a loving family had raised me after that, it wouldn't change what were sort of—unique circumstances."

And he swallowed, because he was already thinking of the question Bulstrode asked next, even before she asked it.

"How can you condemn yourself for not living up to the standard of normality, when that had changed for you from the time you were one year old?"

Harry looked down at his hands. He looked at the far wall, but it remained blank. He looked at Bulstrode, but her face remained the same as it had, and her breathing didn't change, thanks to that spell.

He had no one to deny the words that bubbled up in his head, and no one to voice them to, since he thought asking the question would only get him another question in return. So he leaned back, and thought.

There was still some justice in what Frank had said, he decided. He _could _have been fairer, and more compassionate, and noticed when someone was in pain when he had sex with them. That was all the kind of thing that any decent person would do, and if Harry couldn't be normal, he still wanted to think that he could be decent.

But for the rest of it…

Why _had _Frank and Veronica and even Ginny, who knew more about his past than any of his other lovers, expected him to be happy and merry and normal? Ginny had even known that he was a virgin. But she had expected—maybe fairly, maybe not—more experience from him, and gentleness, and _greatness_. He hadn't given her the greatest time ever, but she had chalked that up to more than inexperience, when she shouldn't have.

And Frank…

Harry snorted. He'd seen through Frank, at least partially, at the Cloth of Gold. If Harry wasn't normal, neither was Frank, not in his desire to go on persecuting someone whose feelings he claimed to care for. All he wanted was his personal vengeance, and Harry didn't have to give Frank's voice any more weight in his own decisions.

Veronica was another story again, but Harry thought he had done better by her. She should have told him sooner if she was unhappy. If she flinched at the sight of his scars, and that was never going to change, then maybe _she _should have realized it wasn't going to work and she needed a lover who was more to her taste, physically.

Harry wasn't perfect. Did it follow that he wasn't allowed to have flaws and the same chance at attaining love as someone who had gone through the war and come out smiling, or someone who had never been in the war at all?

He looked up at Bulstrode. "Do you treat all your patients like this?" he had to ask, with a faint grin.

"What other way could I treat them, when the spell forces me into being neutral?"

Harry smiled. Of course he was going to get a question as an answer. He didn't know why he had ever thought differently.

"Fine," he said. "I feel a little bit better about my nightmare, and some of the forces that were underlying it. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop having nightmares."

Bulstrode inclined her head. "Did you think that this would be the only appointment?"

"I hoped for it," Harry muttered, rubbing his forehead. At least now he knew that he could feel a little comfortable with Bulstrode, and he did trust the oath she had made not to reveal information about him to anyone.

"I have one more question," Bulstrode murmured, her voice so soft and deft that it took Harry a minute to realize what had happened. When he did, he pointed a finger at her and grinned in spite of his anxiety about what was coming next.

"You made a statement! I thought you weren't allowed to do that."

Bulstrode gave him a faint smile, eyelashes sweeping down to cover her eyes. "I sometimes may, for the good of my patients, and for the sake of moving on in a conversation," she said. "As now. In the meantime, I wish to ask: Is your dead godfather your only candidate for the voice you heard in your nightmare?"

Harry hesitated, then swallowed and shook his head. He hadn't wanted to admit it to Draco, but another candidate had popped up in his head. He was a little surprised Draco hadn't guessed it, or asked, but then, Draco didn't know the story that would have been a precondition for his asking.

"Who is it?"

Harry shuddered and touched the sides of his head with his hands. But the chair beneath him helped to steady him, to remind him that he was in a Mind-Healer's office, not lost in the depths of his own mind. While he had endured plenty of delusions at _his _hands, none of them had ever been pleasant, or neutral, or comfortable.

"Who is it?" Bulstrode said, her voice as repetitive as the tick of an iron clock, when perhaps a few minutes had passed.

Harry grimaced and looked up again. "I don't have much choice about answering, do I?" he asked.

"Would you prefer to return at another time, and spend more Galleons?"

Harry cracked a dry laugh in spite of himself. "Not really," he said. "Not for this particular nightmare. I have plenty of others that you could take a look at." He hesitated one more time, but Bulstrode just waited, eyes slow in their blinks as a frog's. "I think it might be the voice of a Dark wizard who tortured me a while ago," he admitted.

"What about this Dark wizard makes him more special than the Dark Lord or others who put you through ordeals?" Bulstrode asked.

Harry shut his eyes. Then he opened them again. Closing himself in darkness didn't make it easier to attend to Bulstrode's questions, as he had thought it might. It just cast him too clearly back into the moments when he had seen nothing except the shifting shadows and shades of his mind.

"He was a Legilimens," Harry whispered. "He—he kept me captive through stirring up my memories and turning them against me. When they finally rescued me, they realized that I wasn't even _bound. _He'd kept me in a room with an open door and a staircase I could have walked up at any time." He knew that some of the other Aurors had wondered about that, and a rumor had circulated that Harry was getting old and slow, unsuited to Auror work. That had stopped the next time he did one of those impossible raids that no one else could do and captured a criminal who had cost a few Auror lives, but it had lasted for several months.

"Could you have walked up the staircase?"

Harry glared at Bulstrode. Sometimes he wished she would emphasize words in her sentences, like normal people. "Of course," he snapped. "It's not like the staircase was particularly steep, or had impossibly slick steps, or anything else."

Bulstrode's hands slowly folded, one on top of the other, so soft and settled that Harry couldn't keep from staring at them in uneasy fascination. "Allow me to repeat the question, with another statement," she said. "Could you have walked up the staircase with him in your head, convincing you of what was not real?"

Slowly, reluctantly, Harry shook his head.

"Why did you not want to admit that?"

Harry flexed his hands back and forth in front of him, staring at the palms. "Because I'm supposed to be better than that," he whispered. "Stronger. I really did think I was. I thought I'd worked on my Occlumency to the point that no one could get inside my head. But he showed me wrong."

"Did you work on your Occlumency after that?"

Harry looked up with a grim smile. At least _he _liked the answer to this question better. "You bet I did. I think that I'm probably better than most of the Aurors in the department now." Not even someone who had bragged in threatening letters to the Ministry about his Dark Arts abilities had been able to get through Harry's shields when they finally clashed. Harry had reasoned it was for the best, since he might carry important secrets about other people, as well as needing to keep himself safe.

"With what Mind-Healer?"

"What Mind-Healer did I work on my Occlumency with?" Harry repeated, frowning, to make sure he understood. He thought it was a weird question for her to ask. When Bulstrode nodded, he snorted and said, "I taught myself out of a book. I didn't know of a Mind-Healer I could trust."

"Were you aware that a visit to a Mind-Healer is mandatory after exposure to a Legilimens who misuses their abilities?"

"No one told me that," Harry said irritably. He wanted to get up and pace again, and then he thought, _Why the hell not? It's not like Bulstrode has the capacity to mind right now. _He stood up and snapped back and forth in front of his seat. Sure enough, her gaze tracked him, but there was no irritation in her face. "Seriously, no one did. I don't remember ever being told that by any Auror in the Department."

"By a friend?"

Harry shook his head. He was sure that Hermione would have told him, if a rule like that had existed. It was hardly the first time he had faced a Legilimens, although it was the worst.

"Did he begin the nightmares?"

"_No_," Harry snapped, swinging around to face her. "You ought to have figured that out by now. Even if he figures in my nightmares, it's not like he made my relatives abuse me or my guilt start up."

"Did he worsen them?"

Harry hesitated. Yes, there was that chance, wasn't there? He hadn't wanted to think about that, but then, he didn't want to think about the nightmares in general. And they hadn't seemed to get worse in the last year. They were bad enough to drive away people from sleeping beside him, and beyond that, he hadn't tried to classify them.

"Did he worsen them?" Bulstrode spoke as if she could go on asking all day, which she probably could.

Harry sighed. "There's a _chance. _But I don't dream of him every evening, you know. Sometimes I dream something different, and sometimes I take Dreamless Sleep Potion, and sometimes I don't remember my dreams."

"So two-thirds of the time you either have different nightmares or you are suppressing your nightmares?" Bulstrode looked at him again as though he was the only fascinating thing in the room. But, Harry decided, running his hand through his hair, how fascinating could she find her own office by now?

"Not _two-thirds _of the time." She was going to think he was some sort of mental case when she returned to her own proper frame of mind, Harry thought. And although he didn't really believe that she would betray his confidence to Draco or anyone else, he still hated the thought of looking weak in front of someone else. "Just—a lot."

Bulstrode nodded, and said nothing.

Harry paced in another circle, shooting Bulstrode looks now and then as he waited for the next question. But she didn't appear disposed to ask it. She waited, breathing softly, and Harry reckoned he had to work through this next part on his own.

Fine. He had nightmares, a lot. But he'd already known that. It was one of the reasons, although far from the only one, that some of his lovers had left. And what he'd done to Andy…

Harry flinched hard and collapsed back into his chair. Bulstrode looked at him again, and there was a spark of returning light in her eyes, as though she had remembered it was the Mind-Healer's job to ask questions around here.

"What else do you have to tell me?" she asked.

"I've told you everything I can think of about the nightmare," Harry said, which was true. "Maybe it does come from that bastard fucking with my head." Not a flinch from Bulstrode, which Harry supposed was additional confirmation that that spell really worked. He would have expected either a widening of the eyes or a narrowing of them from the proper pure-blood woman that Bulstrode represented, most of the time. "And maybe it doesn't. I still think that he contributed to it, but it's not the only thing that did."

Bulstrode nodded. "Would you like to discuss the other things?"

"We already did, as much as I'm comfortable with." Harry said it shortly, leaning back in the chair and wondering why he felt so wrung-out. He seemed to have gone from uncomfortable to questioning to triumphant to exhausted in so short a space of time. He _was _out of practice at talking to Mind-Healers, though. He had avoided them when the Ministry asked him to talk to them, and his own experiences with private ones had been horrible.

"Have you told Draco about this?"

"About the nightmare? Of course." Harry stared at her, wondering if the spell dulled some of her memories as well. "He was the one who suggested coming to you in the first place."

Bulstrode gave him another prim little shake of her head. "Have you told him about the Legilimens you believe might have caused or worsened the nightmare? Have you told him about being held captive inside your own head, more than you were inside a room? Have you told him about being unable to escape because your perceptions were so confused?"

Harry wanted to hunch over and tear at his hair, but he wasn't so far gone as _that_. He just held Bulstrode's eyes and shook his head.

"Why not?" And yes, she did sound mildly interested, not indignant, the way she would have if she had been in her right mind as Draco's friend, Harry thought. "Do you think that he would not like to know?"

Harry shuddered and looked away. He felt as though someone had dropped a honeycomb on his head, all sticky and _covered_. "I think he would be too interested," he muttered, and winced. Those words hurt in the way that only really true words did, the way he had once thought Frank's words were, the way that some of Draco's were.

"He would want you to relive details of the experience that you do not wish to confess to him?"

It was the natural conclusion, wasn't it? And yet Harry shuddered back from the idea and shook his head. "He wouldn't want that," he whispered, his eyes closed as he waited for the next question.

"Then why don't you wish to tell him?"

Harry took a deep, fortifying breath, and finally said it. "He would want to talk it through, to know all about it. And he would want to scold me and hold me and ask me why I hadn't been to see a Mind-Healer already. I don't—I'm so _tired _of feeling like I'm always in the wrong with him, and I'm—part of me wants to be fussed over, but the rest doesn't."

"Because you've been fussed-over in the past?" Bulstrode cocked her head like a curious bird as she waited for Harry to respond.

"Because I _haven't _been," Harry said. "The—the people who raised me didn't do a lot of it. And Hermione and Ron would do more of it if I let them, and I have plenty of fans who would, too. But they wouldn't do it the right way." He stopped, listening to himself, and controlled the impulse to snort. Yes, of course there was a right and a wrong way to fuss, and it made sense that his screwed-up brain would have decided on that.

"Could you ask Draco to fuss over you?"

"No, for the reasons I just told you." Harry stretched uncomfortably in the chair. He had had more than enough revelations for this morning, and while he was sure that Bulstrode's spell could last as long as she needed it to, he didn't really want to take any longer here. "Should I come and see you again in a week?"

"That would be acceptable," Bulstrode said, and stood to gesture to the door. "If you wish to leave now, then do so." It sounded as if she was fighting the temptation to turn it into a question.

Harry sighed and left, shutting the door carefully behind him. The wrung-out sensation persisted. He didn't remember feeling this way with the other Mind-Healers, but then again, things hadn't usually got that far. They either announced that he should be doing better than this, because he was a _hero_, or they told him that he was pathetic, or they wanted his autograph, or…

Harry stuck his hands in his robe pockets. Well, that hadn't happened here. Bulstrode had done her job, and more like a professional than Harry would have expected, given their past history. He had to congratulate her on that, and he had to admit that Draco had found him a good Mind-Healer, considering all his awful experiences in the past. He would tell Draco about it if Draco wanted to hear it.

_Does Ron like Muggle pizza?_

Harry smiled a little as he prepared to Apparate home. He had taken a holiday from work today, knowing he would be useless after his talk with Bulstrode. There wasn't any reason to delay going over to tell Draco about it.

And he _did _want to tell Draco about it. Part of him wanted the fussing and the scolding and the embraces that would probably follow.

He just didn't know if he wanted them enough to ask for them on his own.

* * *

"Did Millicent do a good job?"

Draco didn't raise his eyes from the paperwork he had brought home from the office, which concerned permission for Draco to harvest some parts of magical creatures for Potions research. Harry had come in ten minutes ago, and Draco thought he had enough restless energy to pace the Manor all the way through. Better to leave Harry alone, he'd decided, and let him come to him.

Except Harry had come back into Draco's study and stood breathing irregularly behind his chair, and it turned out that Draco's control wasn't as perfect as he thought it was, after all. He leaned back and fastened his eyes on Harry's face. Harry was red, for some reason, and he met Draco's eyes and then looked away.

"Did she make you uncomfortable?" Draco had feared that happening, a little. Not that Millicent wasn't miles better than the horrible Mind-Healers Harry had described, but on the other hand, the way she acted under that spell of hers could make her creepy, and there was a chance Harry would run out the door the minute he saw her.

"You could have told me who she was," Harry said bluntly, and dropped into the chair beside Draco. He was tense and trembling, his shoulders hunched, his hands dug into his robe pockets. Draco leaned forwards and cast the spell that would build the fire up higher. Harry tensed some more, and then he turned to Draco and swallowed. "But she encouraged me to tell you the real origin of that nightmare."

"I thought I knew it," Draco said. He decided that it was okay to brush some of the hair away from Harry's forehead, and Harry leaned into the touch. Draco concealed a smile. It might be misunderstood, right now. "You let me look at it. Was there something more behind it than your awful relatives and your godfather?"

Harry hesitated, but before Draco could explode, he said, "Yes. A Legilimens held me prisoner for a while. He—he confused me so much that I couldn't even walk out of his house, even though it was open and unwarded and I could have found my wand. He's been showing up in my nightmares since then. I think it was his voice I heard."

Draco stared at Harry. He had no idea what to say. It seemed as though his mouth had gone dry and motionless at the same time, and his hand froze on Harry's head. He thought Harry might back away.

Instead, Harry looked at him and silently braced himself. _For what? _Draco asked himself, but then he knew. _For the kind of explosion that he thinks I'm going to have._

Draco contained the first burst of fiery hot anger that he wanted to give, and gulped, and said, "I didn't know that."

"No reason for you to." Harry's voice was soft, but unwavering, and it didn't look as though he was going to let his eyes flinch from Draco's. "I didn't tell you. I didn't tell anyone—how bad it was. Ron knows something about it, and the Aurors who rescued me. But I didn't tell anyone the full extent of it."

Draco shook his head. He knew that he ought to have an answer for this, but he didn't. "Why not?" he asked, at the end of sorting through all the other words he could have said, and deciding on those two as the best, and the simplest.

"Because I wanted to forget it ever happened, that's why." Harry clenched his hands and dug them into his knees, screwing them back and forth as though he wanted to rub something off them. "Because—Bulstrode told me that going to a Mind-Healer after that would be mandatory, which I didn't know, but I think part of me guessed. I didn't want anyone ordering or pleading with me to go to a Mind-Healer. I just—I wanted to be left alone, and forget that it happened."

"But it added to your dreams, and your fear of Legilimency," Draco finished for him. "That's what made you afraid when you let me in to read your memories of the nightmare."

Harry bit his lip and nodded. "I only wanted to show you what was happening, and I still had to fight against myself as if I was going to swallow poison."

Draco touched Harry's ears, his cheek, his eyelashes. Harry's eyes fluttered closed against his palm, and stayed that way. Draco sighed, wishing he knew what to say, or rather wishing he could put off the words that he knew had to say.

"I'm not someone who can deal with that," he said. "And neither is Millicent, whom you might call by her married name. She prefers that, you know."

Harry grunted. When Draco tugged on his hair, he said, "I'll call her that if I go there again. Why can't she deal with it? I thought Mind-Healers could deal with the ruins of Legilimency, or she wouldn't have told me I should have gone to one."

"They can deal with it right after it happens," Draco said, and pulled Harry against him, so that Harry's head was leaning on his shoulder. "But the damage is progressive, the way that exposure to the Cruciatus Curse can be. They can't do much if you—if you don't come in right away. Someone who's a Master Legilimens and has made a career of it could. I can find someone for you, if you want."

Harry shook his head back and forth, buried in Draco's shoulder. "I had good luck with Bulstrode. But someone else—they won't want to take a secrecy oath once they find out who I am. They'll be thinking of all the Galleons they could make."

Draco stroked the back of his neck, and sighed. He wondered if there was anyone in the world Harry trusted fully, apart from Weasley and Granger. He had given Draco some trust, but there were things he had retained for himself, too. "Then we get a secrecy oath before we tell them who you are. We can do that," he added, when Harry lifted his head and gave him a look that was frankly disbelieving. "Please, Harry. Will you at least try, for me? I'm not thinking of having you well enough for me to fuck, please don't think that."

Harry snorted a little and pulled his head back. "I don't think _that_," he said. "Because you could have had my mouth any time you wanted. I think that you're interfering and meddling and can't leave well enough alone, but not that you want me as some kind of sex toy."

Draco smiled and touched a thumb to Harry's lip. "Look," he said. "You _deserve _to be fussed over, whether or not you believe it. Is there something I could do that would give you pleasure? Just happiness, and nothing else?"

"Happiness and pleasure aren't the same thing," Harry said, his eyes bright and cautious as they watched Draco.

"Tell me," Draco said.

Harry struggled before he could speak again. "I don't know. I half want you to leave me alone, and I don't, at the same time. I half want you to touch me, and I don't, at the same time. I want—I want things, and I don't want them." He flung up his arms and struggled away from Draco, back into his own chair. "This is why so many of my lovers gave up on me," he mumbled, not looking at Draco. "I'm torn so many different ways."

"And I'm not most of your lovers," Draco said, taking his arm. "Can you think of anything?"

* * *

_Yes. Go away and leave me alone, and that might help. _

But Harry bit his lip savagely on the words that he might have spoken, and only leaned further back, letting the chair dip behind him, letting his head fall back and down. He was trying to relax, to let Draco's offer wash over him and only spark good thoughts. Thoughts of what he wanted.

He felt himself tensing up again, and softly shook his head, letting the tension flow out of his muscles whether it wanted to or not. Draco made an inquiring noise beside him. Harry stayed silent, though. Speak right now, and he wasn't sure that he would ever get back into the frame of mind where he could think about this.

Draco seemed to realize that at the same time, and went still, one hand coming to rest on the back of Harry's neck. He caressed Harry's skin, softly, fascinated. Harry grunted and said nothing. His head drooped and slid, and he focused on his muscles, willing them to puddle and flow, to bend if they needed to, but only to make him more comfortable. He wasn't going to rise from the chair and stand. Not right now.

Ironically, one of the things that had made him tense _was _thinking of what he wanted.

_I don't want anything._

That wasn't true, but he couldn't help thinking—couldn't help remembering—how many of his lovers had turned away from him when Harry wanted. When he craved their touch, their company, their understanding. Jacquelyn had told him that he wanted too much, that she felt as though he was going to suck her into a black hole and nothing would ever come back out again.

Harry swallowed at the thought of it, and stirred, or tried to. Draco pushed him firmly back down again.

That made Harry smile. No matter what happened between them, he was just about sure that Draco would never be swallowed up. He was too stern for that. He knew too much about what he wanted.

Had the others?

Maybe not. Ginny had wanted a hero, but had said she hadn't when Harry asked her. Jacquelyn hadn't had enough sense of her own personality. Veronica had thought she wanted Harry, changed her mind when she found out what she was really like and the scars he was carrying around, changed it back when they had come close to breaking up once, and then drifted back into deciding she wanted to be free again. As Draco had said, Frank seemed to simultaneously want revenge on Harry and to persuade Harry that he really cared about him and it wasn't revenge.

Damn it, he was tense again, thinking of Frank. He turned towards Draco, a vague questing motion without opening his eyes, and Draco soothingly rubbed his shoulder. Harry sighed and let his head settle on the chair back again.

What was it he wanted? If he dismissed the fears that Draco would walk away—the problem would be _getting _Draco to go away if Harry really decided that he didn't want to date him anymore—and he dismissed the fears that he might be asking for too much. What did he want?

He hesitated. He knew, but he didn't know if Draco would think it was weird.

But hey, Draco had asked him. If he did think it was weird, he might do it anyway. It at least wouldn't hurt him. And that meant Harry could ask.

"Can you—can you take off my shirt and my trousers and touch me?" he murmured.

He felt Draco freeze beneath him, sucking in his breath. Then he whispered, as if he needed to clarify, "Where? On your cock?"

Harry shook his head. He had to keep his eyes firmly shut, he thought, or he wouldn't be able to do this. "No. On my ribs. Behind my knees. Around—around really lightly, really gently. I'm not that ticklish. Not like you were tickling me, though. Just—tease me with your fingertips. Can you do that?"

He knew that his cheeks were stinging with the force of his blush, but he hoped that Draco wouldn't be disgusted. He kept his eyes closed, though, just in case.

* * *

Draco ran his fingers lightly over Harry's shoulder blade in response, before he could question himself about whether or not it was something he should do. Harry shuddered and buried his head in his arms, but Draco didn't think that had anything to do with disgust.

"Like that?" he whispered.

Harry nodded, head still bowed. Draco reached down and tapped his wand against the side of Harry's shirt. It slit up the seams, sagged and bowed, and Draco took it off, without requiring Harry to lift his head or even his arms to help. The shirt could be repaired easily enough later. Draco thought he might let the house-elves sew it. They had been falling over themselves to find a way to be useful since Harry had started visiting.

Then Draco reached down and tapped his wand against Harry's trousers. Harry shivered this time, and Draco didn't think that shudder was all fear, but it was part of it. He waited, hand against Harry's hip.

Harry took a long second to stand up and let the cut trousers slide down his hips, but he did it at last.

Draco moved back, murmuring encouragement, and let Harry lie down on the nearby couch, positioning himself the way he wanted. Draco had assumed Harry would bury his face in the pillows. It was the easiest way to get what he wanted while also letting himself pretend that it wasn't happening.

Harry stopped halfway through his turn over, though. He knelt there, staring straight ahead, and Draco waited, heart pounding. He had no idea what was coming next. He started to reach out, one hand moving slowly, wondering if he should touch Harry and show him how good it could be, to convince him to continue.

Then Harry shivered and turned fully over to face Draco, stretching his legs out so that his feet rested in Draco's lap. His eyes were wide and glazed enough that Draco could almost suspect him of being on some sort of medicinal potion. He kept shivering, and evidently couldn't stop, even when he could see that Draco's hands were right there on his lap and he wasn't hiding anything that could hurt Harry.

Then he shut his eyes.

Draco let his fingers run over the soles of Harry's feet, and Harry's eyes popped back open. Draco nodded to him. "Keep them open," he whispered, with hardly any breath or force behind his words. But they were still important, and he was evidently keeping Harry's rapt attention on him. "Look at me."

He bowed his head, and breathed over Harry's legs, making the small hairs stand up and his skin break out in rapid gooseflesh. His toes curled and flexed. Draco smiled. He had the impression that it was probably the most serious smile he had ever given. Well, the situation required it.

He reached out and let his fingers settle between Harry's toes, on the fine webs of skin there.

Harry shivered again and stretched his neck. He kept squirming while Draco caressed his feet, up and down, so solid and so slow that Draco's arms trembled themselves with the effort of keeping himself from speeding up. Harry's skin was soft and shiny between his toes, sweaty, warm. Draco curled his fingers, and Harry's toes shifted to follow them.

Then Draco slowly reached up and drew his fingers down Harry's legs. He could see scars there, too, curving marks that looked as though someone had struck him with a whip. Draco wondered if he should ask about them, but Harry hadn't said that he wanted conversation while Draco was touching him.

So Draco just touched _them_ instead, letting his hand linger. Harry stretched and rolled his head back and forth, as though all his nervousness was pouring into his neck, but his legs remained steady beneath Draco's caress. Draco nodded at him, smiled again, and let the sensations pour through him: stretched feeling of the scars, the rough patches where the hair grew thicker, the wonderful strength of the muscles, the secret little area behind the knees that Draco had to work his fingers into.

Harry made a noise when he did that, and Draco paused and stared at him. He knew that the miraculous permission he'd got could be revoked at any moment, although he was trying hard not to think about what he would do if that happened.

"It tickles," Harry muttered, and ducked his head.

Perhaps, after everything they had been through, Draco shouldn't have found that _charming, _but he did. He smiled and snuggled his fingers further into that little crevice, then brought his other hand up and did the same thing for Harry's second knee.

Harry was panting a little, letting his tongue hang out as unselfconscious as any dog's. He was still half-ducking his head, his neck rolling back and forth, and small pleased sounds came from his mouth.

_He likes this. He asked me to touch him like this because he really does like being touched here. It brings him pleasure…_

That made Draco want to speed up the touch, to strengthen it, to see what else he could bring Harry. But he remembered just in time that Harry had asked him to keep it gentle. Whether it was because he had been touched harshly in the past or not, Draco didn't know, and it wasn't his business. He kept his word, and only rubbed and pressed and touched in a miracle of softness.

Harry's head fell back again, and his eyes shut. Draco eased his way up Harry's legs, watching how they twitched beneath his touch. There was another scar near Harry's groin. Draco let his fingers follow it, and Harry murmured and turned his head towards him, opening one eye. If it hurt to have Draco kneeling between his legs and pressing them apart, then he didn't show it.

And this close, Draco couldn't mistake the hardness that was the very opposite of minding it, pressing up against the side of his palm when his hand got a little careless.

He met Harry's gaze. Harry gave him a small smile. He seemed to be more relaxed than he had been when Draco first began touching him, trusting Draco to do the right thing, to caress him the right way.

Draco allowed himself only one quick skim of his hand along Harry's erection, so swift that he almost couldn't distinguish it from Harry's leg. But then he felt the blazing warmth collected there, and his mouth spilled over with saliva before drying out suddenly, and he licked his lips.

Yes, he wanted that. But he would wait, for the moment.

He had to lean forwards and ease along Harry to touch his chest. Harry didn't move to throw him off, or show any sign when Draco's legs touched his in turn, although that had to be rougher than Draco's hands. He just let his head dangle again, and hummed under his breath.

Draco touched the scars he had been curious about, murmuring. Harry hadn't asked for his words, but he found that he couldn't keep them silent, not when he was touching and gazing at the marked skin he had already touched and seen before.

"This one is beautiful. This one looks like it hurt." He traced the ragged sunburst he had been curious about, in the middle of Harry's chest. Harry cringed a little when Draco would have asked how he got it, so Draco let his hand pass on. "This one…I can't believe that someone would leave a man who looks like you do."

He let his fingers play, finally, with the cords along Harry's neck. Harry gazed up at him. There was no name for what was in his eyes except _intensity. _

Well, that and trust. After all that had happened to Harry, Draco knew something about what it must take him, to lie here and let Draco touch him, caress him, _look _at him, and all the while, he was hard.

Draco finally bent down and breathed gently over the cords of Harry's neck, as if he would play music with them. Harry panted and squirmed a bit. Draco sat back, still in his lap, still with their groins a few inches away from pressing against each other, and met Harry's eyes.

There was no need to speak. Harry's contentment was deep in his face, and he reached up and kissed Draco, gently, hesitantly, with some of the skill, Draco thought, that he'd taught Harry in their little lessons.

Draco shut his eyes. It was exquisite, to feel Harry's hands playing along his back and neck, delicately, pleadingly, and then settling on his shoulders as though he was straining with Draco in some playful roll through water.

Draco could imagine them like that, easily. Twisting through the midst of water or air, weightless, locked together.

"Thank you," Harry whispered into his ear.

He didn't say anything about whether he would go back to Millicent, and Draco didn't press him. They lay together, and Harry shook his head and burrowed deeper into Draco's chest, and Draco stroked and held him, and for this moment, this timeless moment out of a whole life, it was enough.


End file.
